


All About the Ears

by Supercalifragiwhatsit



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: But mostly fluff, Ear Kink, F/M, Fluff, Unexplained magical shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:46:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supercalifragiwhatsit/pseuds/Supercalifragiwhatsit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where part-elves appearing human isn't due to genetics, but to an ancient spell. Then that spell gets broken, leaving every part elf suddenly stranded in a completely foreign body, whether they knew of their heritage or not.</p>
<p>Including Alistair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kmeme. The very _first_ thing I ever wrote for a prompt there, and originally intended to be maybe a few short posts so I'm really sorry for the completely random chapter lengths!
> 
> The magical shenanigans that led to this situation never get explained, but it was probably Hawke's fault. Somehow.

Aia squirmed as something large and decidedly too warm pressed against her back, drawing her out of sleep. The elf wrinkled her nose and made a small noise of protest, determinedly keeping her eyes closed. Ugh. Morning. Damn morning. To the void with Alistair and his... warmness. If that was even a word. Sure it was nice in the winter, but in the summer heat it was a bit too much.

Hell, even the breeze coming in the window was warm. It was going to be one of those days, she could tell.

She shoved lightly at Alistair's arm, peeking one eye open and determining that yes, the sun was coming up. No excuses then, everybody else would be up soon and there was no way Aia was going to risk letting someone else steal all of the pastries; being commander had to have some perks afterall, and if she had her way extra pastries would be perk number one.

"Gerrup. Breakfast and... stuff. Ice spells maybe. Mmm, ice spells. I'm having cold tea this morning." She muttered, trying to pry Alistair's arm from around her waist. The man was having none of it though and just nuzzled at the back of her neck, answering something that may or may not have been words.

Something was... off. Aia shook her head a bit, brushing red hair from her eyes and prodding at her lover's arm. Shouldn't he be... looming more? Maybe? Or maybe it was the heat. Yeah, had to be the heat. "Come on. Up! Rise and shine and all that shit. Hungry Wardens are greedy Wardens and it's blueberry pastry day!"

When Alistair responded by just clinging more and muttering something about it being far too early for breakfast she made a disgruntled sound, half twisting to try to grab at his ear and haul him off that way. Ears made such wonderful leashes. Stupid humans and their little... pointed ear. Pointed. Ear. Not Alistair. _What the fuck_?!

Aia shrieked and slammed her elbow back into the man's chest. Somehow she ended up getting her feet tangled in the scant sheets on the bed, but she managed to cast a force field at the interloper as her ass hit the ground. Sure, not graceful, but never let it be said that she couldn't think on her feet. Err... Side. Whatever.

She surged to her feet, the words to crushing prison on her lips as she prepared to dance back out of range of the inevitable blast... and came face to face with a very perplexed looking Alistair. Ish. The spell died on her fingers.

It was her lover alright. A slighter and pointier Alistair, but definitely him right down to the red spot she'd left high on his neck the night before.

"I didn't do it!" She frowned. "I mean, not the force field. I totally did that. But... uh... I didn't do it. The other stuff. What the hell, is elvish contagious now? You'd think half the tower would have turned pointy by now with how... uh..."

A bit belatedly she raised her hand, dispelling the field in a wave of blue. Right. Not trapping lovers in force fields after possibly turning them into... elvy things. Was elvy a word? Maker's breath.

"What on--"

Aia couldn't tell if Alistair looked angry or worried or just really really confused, so she interrupted him with a sheepish grin. "Do me a favor, love? Grab your ears."

Even if it was her fault, the look on his face was totally worth it.

***

By the time she stopped giggling, Alistair had discovered the hard way that his hips were now narrower via a pair of dropping trousers, which set her off again.

"Well I'm glad one of us is getting some amusement out of this." He told her dryly, tilting his head from side to side in the mirror as he clung to his trousers with one hand. "Do I make a pretty elf? I do make an awful pretty elf, don't I? Not as pretty as you, of course."

Aia snorted, managing to quell the giggling for long enough to bounce up behind him, "I don't think you're an elf, exactly. I mean, you're still more than a head taller than me. Just a bit skinnier and less hairy. Your ears aren't even as long as normal elf ears."

"Well I'm sure I'm the smashingest not-elf around-- Hey, I'm not that hairy!" He pouted at her in the mirror.

Her fingers danced up his skin, and the elven mage ignored his the wince as she grabbed a bit of chest hair and tugged at it, "Hairier than an elf!" She jumped back out of range as he grabbed at her hand, sticking out her tongue. "Come on, we're lucky my yelling didn't wake anyone up. Or at least I assume it didn't, since no one is banging on the door. I don't want to miss pastries."

"Whoa whoa whoa, let's be changing your dashing warrior back first, shall we?" Alistair interjected, waving a hand in his own general direction with a wry grin. "I don't think my armor will fit all that well like this."

"We could put you in some mage robes." She suggested, half serious, "I've still got that set of Tevinter robes that's missing strategic pieces of fabric. In this heat it'd probably be more comfortable than armor anyways." The elf paused, biting at a finger as something occurred to her. "And... if I could dispell it, it should have already dispelled."

"Come again?"

"When I dispelled the force field. Can't you do something templary?"

Her lover frowned, raising a hand then lowering it, "I don't know if there's anything to..." He shifted awkwardly, glancing away from her, "Did you do something with... you know. That..."

Oh great. That. What was left of her good mood fled as Aia shrugged, "I don't remember casting anything and lack of, uh, blood would suggest nothing of 'that' nature was done, so... No?"

'That'. They had agreed to just not talk about 'that'. And she wasn't sure if 'that' could even do this sort of spell.

Shrugging one shoulder she gave him a helpless look, "So far as I know the only person whose shape I can change is myself." She forced a grin, hoping to dispell some of the gloom that mention of 'that' always brought to the room, "Maybe you're secretly a mage and your powers just realized you really want to be as awesome as us elves?"

"Ha! If I went all elven then whose shield would you hide behind?" Alistair's grin looked about as forced as hers likely did, but hey at least they were trying. Damn, apparently this was going to be one of those mornings where their emotions got to do a nice happy dance all over the place.

She didn't voice that though, instead trying to think back to the tower and if she'd ever even heard of this sort of transfiguration. No... she was drawing a blank there. Sure, there'd been joking about that sort of shape changing at the tower, but all of the jokes had been made in hypotheticals, nothing backed by spells or research. Aia chewed at her lip and headed for her armor stand, halfheartedly trying to buy herself some time to think of a solution.

"Mayyybe some annoyed elf decided to change all of the humans in the keep? I mean, you're changed and I'm not so obviously it's a human thing." She said, half talking to herself as she traced a finger down the blue stripes of her armor. Yeah. That didn't sound too likely.

"What, like Velanna finally snapped or something?" Alistair at least sounded amused again.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, grin coming naturally again, "Well, we'll find out when we see the others won't we. At breakfast. With pastries. Or no pastries, if we don't hurry up."

"Always the food with you, huh? There's a grey warden appetite for you." Alistair's stomach growled pretty much on cue, and Aia couldn't help but start giggling again.

Yeah, it was going to be one of those mornings.


	2. Chapter 2

"Shouldn't you be more worried about this?"

Aia paused with a pastry half shoved into her mouth, shrugging as she took a bite and making a noncommittal sound.

Alistair was still upstairs, attempting to solve his clothing problem after firmly vetoing her idea about the mage robes. Not one to wait around when there was food to be had, the elf had gone ahead downstairs and quickly discovered that whatever was going on, it apparently was only going on with Alistair.

Or at least it wasn't affecting Nathaniel or any of the Silver Order (that she'd seen).

The human in question gave her one of those looks that suggested she was barking mad, so Aia rubbed a bit of blueberry sauce from the side of her mouth and answered, "It's not like we noticed any ill side effects and I couldn't sense any magic about it. No sense stressing about it. Whatever I did will probably wear off before we even have time to find him clothes that fit."

"He changed shape in his sleep without either of you noticing any magic, and you _aren't worried_?"

Okay, so maybe the human had a point. "Uhm..." She half shrugged, "We lead interesting lives?" Right. Okay. So maybe leaving Alistair alone hadn't been the best idea ever.

"You know, he's been up there for awhile. I'll... bring him some pastries or something. And maybe bang on Velanna's door on the way. She'll know if it's something Dalishy." Aia chewed on her bottom lip, trying to seem nonchalant and not at all worried. Nothing to worry about, not at all. It was just some weird fluctuation in magic. Maybe it was a side effect of her own powers or something; afterall, Morrigan hadn't exactly been the type to impart everything so maybe this was a... side effect of sleeping with a shapeshifter. Two shapeshifters, if she was being honest, which was a good thing to be in her own head at least.

Because shapeshifting was totally transferable by sex. At least 'Blame Morrigan' was something Alistair would usually agree with. Not totally fair to Morrigan, but it wasn't like she was around to protest or anything.

"Hey, you planning on leaving any of those for the rest of us?"

Aia jumped, one of the pastries falling off of the plate she'd been filling and onto the table, almost rolling onto the floor before it was caught by the owner of the cheery voice that had startled her.

"Jeeze Commander, long night?" Sigrun gave her a cheeky grin before slipping into a seat at the table.

"Rough morning. Alistair's an elf now. Sort of."

"He's _what_?"

Normally Velanna sounding cross wasn't exactly Aia's favorite way to start a day, but since today had quite quickly gone to the Void in a handbasket all Aia could think was that it was a good thing she'd come for food when she had or there wouldn't be any pastries left to bring up to Alistair. From the sounds of it everyone would be in here soon. What was it with Wardens and getting up this early? Or maybe they all had the same 'must claim pastries' attitude as she did. All things considered, that would make sense.

She snagged one last pastry to replace her runaway before turning to Velanna and giving her a bright, if halfway faked, smile. "Oh you know how it goes. One thing leads to another and suddenly someone's ears go pointy!"

"I... No. No I don't know how that goes."

Aia bit at the side of her lip, moving a couple steps away from the table. "So... No bits of Dalish wisdom about turning a human back into a human then? Damn."

The Dalish mage frowned at her, one hand tapping at her hip, "I've never heard of such a thing, no. Why would we turn humans into elves?"

"Just a guess?" She glanced back at Nathaniel, "If you lot happen to hear of anyone else having randomly shapechanged send someone up. Assuming this isn't just Alistair I might be able to find some sort of... I don't know... common trait or something?"

The human's nod was enough to get her going towards the hallway. Hopefully she was just being silly. Nothing to worry about. It wasn't like Alistair could have combusted or something while she was gone! Nope, that was just silly. Did poisons cause shapechanging? Or magic potions? When would have he had time to drink a magic potion? Granted it wasn't like she was always with him but...

By the time she reached the top of the stairs she had halfway convinced herself that instead of finding a healthy and whole slightly elven Alistair she was going to find a pile of Alistair-goo or something equally terrible.

Instead, as soon as she turned the corner she was greeted with the welcome sight of a very much alive Alistair. Elfy and in baggy clothes, sure, but just the fact that no horrifying side effects had manifested nearly had her sagging against the wall in relief.

"Ooo, breakfast in bed? For me? I should get turned into an elf more often!"

"Yeah right. This is all mine. All mine. No pastries for slowpokes." Any other time Aia would have tried to hold the plate hostage or something equally childish. Not that it would have worked much, even in this slighter form Alistair had far longer reach than she, but it was the effort that counted. Or annoyed, as the case may be. Today, however, she just grinned at him as he pilfered several of 'her' pastries.

He shoved one into his mouth, saying something around it.

"Sorry, what was that? I don't speak pastry."

He swallowed, not looking chastened in the least, "And here I thought you were the language expert! I asked if you'd found anything out about this." he waved a pastry in the general direction of his head. "I saw people out in the courtyard and didn't see anyone panicing, so I'm guessing the keep hasn't turned into the land of elves and dwarfs?"

Aia shook her head, "So far you're the only one. Granted, the other explanation could be that everyone here is just too jaded."

"You could change into a dragon and roar a bawdy tune from the top of the keep and they'd just yell at you to keep it down." Alistair laughed, grinning at her, then reached out for the plate, "If we're eating up here, shall I relieve the lady of her burden?"

"Oh no, no you don't. You just want to steal my pastries.


	3. Chapter 3

By midday they had determined that whatever had happened to Alistair, it wasn't an isolated incident. One woman in the Silver Order and one of Warden recruits had awoken similarly changed, though both of them had changed much less in body than Alistair had and their ears weren't quite as pointed as his.

"It couldn't have been some sort of area spell or anything like that." She thought aloud, leaning besides a rack of swords in the armory, "If that were the case then the Wardens would have been affected long before it reached the Silver Order or the recruits."

"Maybe it's... something like a Chain Lightning spell." Alistair suggested, tightening a strap on his armor. "We just have to find the illusive connection marking us as enemies in need of elfifying."

Aia couldn't help but think that if things were switched and she was the one dealing with this, she wouldn't be taking it nearly so well. There would probably be some panicking involved. To be honest there would probably be a lot of panicked shapeshifting followed by an attempt to fly to the circle for help. Maker, it was a good thing Alistair had his head screwed on straighter than hers. He was more grounded about this than she was and she wasn't even the one affected.

"Earth to Aia." Alistair waved a gauntleted hand in her direction, raising an eyebrow, "Has my profound observation shocked you speechless?"

"What? I wasn't listening." She lied, "I was too distracted by you shimmying into that new armor."

"Shimmying? There was no shimmying. Well, maybe a little but that was just for you." He struck a pose in front of one of the shields lining the opposite wall, then crossed his arms and studied his reflection in the polished surface, "I look rather like me. If you shrunk me down a bit."

"And made your ears bigger. Don't forget the ears!"

"Are you calling my ears big? Maker, she wounds me!"

Aia snorted as Alistair clutched his hands over the center of his armor, sticking her tongue out at him, "Your heart is a bit to the left."

"Well obviously you just have bad aim."

She grabbed an arrow from the quiver on her back and shook it at him. "Says you to the girl with lots of sharp and pointy things."

He grinned at her over his shoulder as he headed towards the armory door, "You? Hurt me? Never! And the sharp pointy things have this really technical name, you know. They're called arrows." Her lover dodged out the door before she could throw one of said arrows at him - not that it would do much good used that way.

She followed after him, only to find him right around the corner, apparently having been stopped by one of the dwarven Wardens. As she caught up to him he half turned, "They found another. One of the kitchen boys is just as elfy as I am."

"So." She said as she caught up. "I take it the Chain Lightning theory is a bust?"

"You _were_ listening!" Alistair grinned at her, then nodded at the boy. "But yes, probably. Maybe. We're back to square one then?"

"The boy's mother's an elf, if that's summat that'll help." The dwarf offered. When she frowned slightly he gave a half shrug. "Figured it was worth mentioning."

"It was, thank you. If you find out anything else, please keep us appraised." She answered automatically, mind trying to puzzle this new bit of information into what she already knew. Half elf. It couldn't just be proximity to an elf; if that were the case then far more people should have changed shape than just four. But maybe...

She glanced at her lover, who was watching her expectantly, "Alistair, are you sure you're... You know..."

"Your favouritest warrior ever?"

Aia rolled her eyes up, grinning, "All human?"

"Not at the moment, no." He leaned against the wall, frowning at her, "But that's not what you meant. You mean... like my parents? Well... Yes. I'd have to be. Wouldn't I? Eamon would have known if my mother was an elf. He'd never have tried to make me king then."

The elven mage had her doubts about that. "I suppose your harpy of a sister would probably have mentioned something."

"Heyyy, don't be mean. Your face twists all up when you say mean things." He twisted his lips at her, mimicking what she was quite sure _wasn't_ the look on her face.

It was enough to make her giggle though, and she hit the side of her fist onto his pauldron as she passed him. "Well, if we're back at a dead end then we should head out to Amaranthine. If no one is panicking there then it's just a Vigil's Keep thing. Otherwise..."

"Otherwise someone will be insisting that this is all an elfy plot to make us all more... elfy." He followed after her, and when she glanced over her shoulder she caught a wry grin, "Isn't it just wonderful how people react to a crisis?"

"Frankly I'm just glad that most of them tend to conveniently forget I'm a mage."

"Aw, no one would blame you. They love you! Or they should, you solve all of the problems around here." He caught up to her again, gently bumping at her shoulder with his arm as they walked towards the gates.

She tilted her head to grin up at him, "I couldn't ever get _anything_ done without my big strong warrior to protect me though."

"That's me! Human shield at the ready; protector of fragile mages and kittens everywhere!"


	4. Chapter 4

Trouble had met them outside of the Vigil's gates as usual. How exactly the mabari always managed to know when Aia was going somewhere was a mystery... but the mage had eventually decided that questioning a dog on his seemingly pyschic abilities was more or less a waste of time. Especially since neither she nor anyone she knew could actually speak dog, and if Trouble could speak common he wasn't talking.

Apart from the mabari's dedicated hunt for squirrels along the path, most of the walk to Amaranthine was spent in silence; both herself and Alistair lost in their own thoughts. For the first couple of years after the blight Aia had _hated_ this sort of silence. In the circle silence meant that the templars were watching (which admittedly was almost all of the time) or that exams were looming. Neither situation had exactly been endeared to her, so it had become almost second nature to hum and tap or talk to herself or just do _something_ to break the silence when things weren't supposed to be tense.

Now though... now the silence was sort of comforting. Companionable, as they said, though that really didn't seem like a good description of it. It was easy to imagine that this was just any other day berefit of random mysterious enchantments; the swish of her armor and the soft clanking of Alistair's only helped the illusion of normalcy. She could hear birds off in the forest and the occasional rustle as something was startled into movement by their passing. It was... comfortingly normal to just walk together, the relative silence only truely broken by Trouble's occasional bark.

Well, Trouble and the occasional muttered ice spell; whoever had come up with the bright idea of multi-layered Warden armor should be cursed to the Void and back because she was not made for this heat.

Sure, it wasn't exactly a responsible use of mana, but it wasn't like they were under attack or anything. Void, now that she'd thought that they were probably going to be beset upon by darkspawn or bandits or giant spiders from nowhere. She glanced discretely too the side, but nothing jumped out of the bushes. Huh, maybe all of the giant spiders were downed by the heat as well.

This was what they got for being on the northern border of Ferelden. The fact that it was quite likely cooler here than across the Waking Sea wasn't so much comforting as it was mildly disturbing.

"Maybe I turned into some sort of wereelf. Is that a thing? Like a werewolf, except an elf?"

Aia laughed, the comment jarring her out of her own thoughts, and turned her head to grin up at Alistair, "A _wereelf_? Where'd that come from?"

Apparently Alistair's thoughts had been quite a bit more on track than her's had.

"Well you did bite me..." Alistair gave her a sheepish look, rubbing his hand over his neck where she'd marked him the night before.

"I didn't even draw blood you big baby."

"But it's all red and I just know you did that on purpose or you would have healed it already. Anyway, not the point. The last time we dealt with werewolves it was a Dalish thing so maybe one of them did the same thing just... with elves and not wolves." He shrugged as she gave him an amused look, "Just an idea."

It was tempting to just tease him... but he did have a point and with the walls of Amaranthine rising into view at the end of the road it would probably be a good time to start brainstorming again.

"Maybe, but... A normal wolf bite didn't make them werewolves, right? Just werewolf bites. Or naked tree lady bites I'd assume." She grinned, "Hey! That part fits! If you take out the tree part and make it a nonspecific lady."

"So you're a nonspecific lady now, are you? I should keep that in mind."

She snorted, hitting his pauldron, "I certainly hope so considering you aren't the only one changed." She frowned. "Including one kid, which cancels out anything naughty."

"Maybe some elf kid bit him while they were playing or... something?" He shrugged as she gave him a baffled look, "What? It was just an idea."

"If we ever have children, you are so not allowed to teach them any games. Just saying."

"Hey! I never bit anyone!"

"Uh huh."

"You're much more likely to bite someone than I am. You bite me all the time!" He paused, then added in a rush, "Not that I'm complaining or anything. Anyways. You. Being completely wild. As a kid, I mean. Because you're Aia and you'd do that sort of thing. Didn't you say you got stuck on top of a statue once?"

"Oh yeah, I was the wildest little wild thing in the stuffy stuffy tower." She snorted, dancing ahead a few steps and half turning to grin at him, "Swung from the ceiling, I did. Bit a few Templars."

"See, told you! I suppose it's a good thing Templars wear heavy plate or they'd be turning all elfy too."

"Didn't you scream just to screw with the monks?"

"Screaming and biting are too totally different things." Alistair tossed a hand up, as though that ended the debate.

It wouldn't have, but by this point the were cresting the rise in the road towards the city gates and she had a boisterous mabari to remind he was supposed to be behaving like a wardog, not a puppy.

Not that Trouble listened much to that, instead bounding forwards to where Constable Aidan waited at his usual spot. How he always managed to be there when she went to the city, she had no idea.

Maybe he had someone watching for blue striped or bright silver armor on the road or something. They _did_ stand out a bit compared with the leather and dulled fabric that everyone else outside of the gates was wearing.

Apparently her lack of a comeback had attracted Alistair's attention to the same spot, and he commented dryly, "What's the bet they don't even notice? You and strangeness is like... well... you and strangeness."

"Oh come on, you're totally noticeable! How many other sexy warriors do I drag about everywhere?"

Alistair laughed, "Well someone has to keep you safe from all the trouble you get into!"

The elf giggled, tempted to make something of that... but by this point they were close enough that the Constable was walking towards her and she needed to act seriously if she wanted other people to take this seriously. Afterall, 'cursed with elfyness' wasn't exactly as life threatening as the crisises she was usually embrioled in.

"Afternoon, Constable; I don't suppose you've had any random reports of people turning into elves?" She asked brightly once they were within easy speaking distance.

Aidan stopped, frowning at her with the sort of look she'd come to expected from people who were resigned to being forever baffled by what she got herself into, "I... haven't personally received any such reports, Commander. I can't imagine that's the sort of thing that would be brought to the guard. Possibly the Templars..." The Constable trailed off as he noticed Alistair standing behind her. "Ser Alistair?"

Aia could hear the clink of Alistair's armor behind her as the man shrugged with an awkward laugh, "Yes, well, we appear to have stumbled across something. While sleeping. A few other people in the keep changed as well so we wanted to check the city."

"It totally wasn't my fault. I promise." Aia added.

The guards gave her a collective mystified look, so she shrugged and shifted awkwardly, "I'm usually right in the middle of everything, so I figured it was worth clarifying."

***

Several very annoying hours later they had determined that while this epidemic of elfyness wasn't exactly widespread, there was definitely more of it in Amaranthine than there was at the keep. It was rather confusing, really. Several of the ladies and men working in the local brothel had changed, as well as the few half elves living in the alienage or outside the gates. Some dock workers, and the bartender at the Crown and the Lion. Questioning around the merchant quarter had revealed that Mervis's wife and son had both changed to differing extents. The chantry had been the most trying part of the afternoon; first convincing one extremely twitchy Templar that this wasn't the sort of magic he should be freaking out about (admittedly she might have been lying through her teeth, but it was hard to feel bad about lying to templars), then to reassure one newly elvy chantry sister that they were looking into it.

As they finally exited the chantry doors, she couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief. Strange as this all was, at least it didn't seem to be focused and absolutely no one seemed harmed. And people knew she was looking into it, which meant more would be coming forwards within a matter of days, if not hours.

"What if... What if it's permanent?"

"I won't have to stand on my tiptoes to kiss you?" Aia answered brightly, brushing a bit of hair out of her face and eyeing Alistair speculatively as she paused before the stairs. "Well, maybe a little. You're still pretty tall. But not _as_ tall!"

"Hooray for the shorty not feeling quite as short!" He teased, grinning at her for a moment before his expression grew nervous again. "I'm serious though. I mean... we don't even know what caused it. Neither of us even felt anything. I..."

The mage was more worried about what would happen if he was shapeshifted again. Or outright killed. Or if something screwed with his head. She didn't let any of that show on her face though; time and experience had taught that whenever she got nervous, other people tended to panic.

So instead of voicing any of her worries, she reached a hand up and stroked her thumb along his cheekbone, conjuring up a teasing grin, "Oh come on, within hours you were already in running around in armor. I bet if it were reversed I'd still be falling over! It's not like I can't cover your arse while you adjust to fighting a bit shorter and lighter." She stuck out her tongue, moving to pull her hand back, "Or are you _weaker_ too?"

Alistair snorted and rolled his eyes, "I'm still plenty strong enough to protect my dainty elven maiden, thank you very much." He grabbed at her hand before she could pull it away, pressing a kiss to her knuckles in a way that never failed to make her giggle, "Or should we spar so I could prove it, m'lady?"

Her stance shifted and she pressed her free hand over her heart, tossing her head back dramatically. "As though I could have any hope of defeating such a valiant warrior. I fear I shall have to resort to cheating!" She grinned, "Even weakened though my opponent may be!"

"Oh it's on now."

She pulled her hand away and dodged as he tried to grab her about the waist, giggling and sticking her tongue out. "Ooh, hand to hand, is it?"

People were staring, she was sure, at the two uniformed Grey Wardens acting like a couple of apprentices, chasing each other around the statue of Andraste as though they didn't have to worry about taint or darkspawn or random shapechanging. Aia didn't care though; let people watch. This, this was what she needed. This reassurance that Alistair was still Alistair no matter what he looked like... not that she hadn't been getting that most of the day.

Plus, whenever they "sparred" it tended to quickly lead to a completely different sort of recreation, and Aia found herself rather eager for that sort of distraction at the moment. Much more fun than stressing over possible curses. Much more fun by leagues.

"Mmm, I do think we might want to move this to the tavern." She teased as he managed to corner her against the railing.

To her surprise the grin on his face immediately fell away and he stepped back, looking... disturbed. There was no other word for it.

Concerned, Aia reached a hand up again, caressing his cheek, "You alright, love? I mean apart from the randomly elfy bit..." She pulled up a shaky grin, trying to seem unphased. Hopefully nothing else had happened. She really really hoped nothing else had happened. Alistair didn't usually avoid stuff like this. He blushed and acted all cute and bashful and then swept her up off into their rooms once she'd teased him too much. He didn't... draw back.

"I wasn't... joking earlier. This... I'm not the _same_ like this. Am I? What if I don't change back? It changes things, right?" Her lover glanced away, pulling back a bit slightly, "What if I end up changing all the way to an elf? Or if I just keep on changing to different things? Or even if it's just... going to be like this. Forever. Would you..."

Whatever Alistair was going to ask faded off, and for a moment Aia couldn't figure out what he was worried about. Other than the random changing, of course. Damnit she hadn't even thought of that. But the raw nervousness of the look he was giving her wasn't the sort of look he got when dealing with yet another bout of random mysterious magic. If anything he tended to be a bit more grounded about that sort of thing than she was, and up to a few minutes ago that seemed to have been how the day was going.

It was almost like he was less worried about the magic and more worried about--

Aia's thoughts came crashing to a halt and she blinked, suddenly realizing that Alistair was worried she wouldn't-- As though what shape he took really mattered that much! Handsome men could be found anywhere, but there was only one Alistair. Hell, she was the Hero of Ferelden; if she really really wanted she could probably have a harem of men at her beck and call and no one would blink! Okay, so they might, but they wouldn't actually do anything to _stop_ her if that was what she wanted. And it wasn't. It really really wasn't. The only thing she wanted was right here, no matter the form it took.

A gentle grin stole over her face and the elf grabbed at his gauntleted hand, pulling it towards her and pressing it over her heart, "Would you stop liking me if I turned human?"

"What?! No! Of course not! That's redic--" Alistair glanced away sheepishly, rubbing his free hand through the spikes of his hair, "Oh. Right. I guess I'm being stupid, huh? Well, that's my fulfilling the brutish warrior stereotype for the day."

She rolled her eyes. "You're being _human_... sapient. Whatever." She paused, not really wanting to word something wrong and just make him doubt more... void why hadn't she thought of this coming up? She was supposed to be the one that was all observant. "If there's a way to dispel whatever this is, then we'll find it. Otherwise you're a whole new shiny Alistair for me to play with!"

Okay, so that could have probably come out more comforting. Maker she was bad at this.

The human shifted nervously, blushing a bit, "Ah... Well... What if all of the changes aren't... ah... good?"

"Well I can't imagine any are particularly bad. Not for that sort of thing, anyways."

"Some could be bad. Less than good. Just... Uh... Well definitely not good."

For a moment she was stared up at him in confusion, then it clicked. Right. Figured. _Men_. Her grin turned a bit wicked. "Oh come on, like I haven't seen an elf naked before. Or done naughtier things." She paused, "For that matter, it's not like you haven't either. The seeing, I mean."

Alistair's blush nearly reached his ears at that and he glanced back over his shoulder, as though he was expecting some naughty chantry sister to be eavesdropping or something. A few years ago that might have been the end of it... but instead of stammering he turned back towards her with a grin, leaning closer, "Well I have seen plenty of _you_ but I don't think that's really... uh... the... Maker I can't think of a way to phrase it that won't make me feel guilty talking about this in front of a Chantry."

"Oh I didn't mean me." Aia blinked innocently up at her lover. This she could deal with. All of the messed up stuff could wait, but this was easy. "I was referring to Zevran."

Apparently it was possible to choke on air. Either that or Alistair had literally swallowed his tongue.

"During the blight, we tended to bathe in groups, remember? You did look, didn't you? There's no way you never looked; we were traveling for almost a year. You had to have looked. I mean, at least to see whether his tattoos went--"

"No! No no nonono. Absolutely not. Did not look. There was absolutely no looking."

"Really? Because I have it on good authority that _he_ looked." She teased, not even bothering to try with the innocent looks anymore. "So did I. It's so much easier to bathe with other people, and Wynne had the most wonderful--"

"Lalalala not listening! Oh look there's the tavern! Let's go!"

"-- soaps." She finished impishly as Alistair spun away. The human only got a few steps before she darted after him, arms wrapping around him with a giggle. "But to get back to the point of this, you really shouldn't be all that worried."

Alistair just made a disgruntled sound in response.

She stood on her tiptoes, bracing one hand against Alistair's back to support herself as she stretched up to let her breath brush past his ear, "Not to mention, there are a few perks to an elven form. What say we should experiment to see how many of them you have?" Aia flicked her tongue out to brush along the shell, then she let go and skipped back a step. A wicked grin stole over her face as she watched Alistair go delightfully red all the way to his newly pointed ears.

Not that he wouldn't have done that as a human too. Clearly this called for more experimentation.


	5. Chapter 5

Luck didn't seem to be on Aia's side so far as experimenting (or even harassing Alistair) went. No sooner had she gotten him into the tavern than a servant had come inching up asking for the Warden Commander. Leaving Alistair and Trouble at the tavern in case any other reports came to them, she'd gone to calm down one elvy noble, then another found her and she had to reassure them that no, their cook going elvish wasn't a sign of a curse upon their entire house, then another...

By the time she was done dealing with 'emergencies' the sun was dipping below the horizon. Usually sunset was one of her favorite parts of the day, especially if she could manage to get to the docks to watch the colors stretching along the coast.

Now she was dreading it. Every change she had heard of had happened during sleep. At some point Alistair had to sleep. Whether or not he'd change more... or into something completely different...

Well, at least after tonight they'd know.

All the politics and possible curses and not knowing what the hell was going on or how to fix it was starting to remind her of the Blight. Except without the overarching doom.

Somehow she doubted she'd be able to fix this particular problem by shooting it. Setting things on fire would make her feel better, but she doubted that would help either.

If she'd want to fix it at all. It had occured to her somewhere along her faked reassurances to the nobility that if random nobles were going permanently pointy they'd rather have to be nicer to the elves. She'd never exactly been one to define herself as an elf (even defining herself as a mage seemed a bit forced, sometimes), but that didn't stop other people from doing so. As far as she knew, you either were elven, or you weren't. Half elves were human, or maybe dwarven, not at all elven. If that line were blurred...

Maybe things would go smoothly, or maybe everything was about to blow up around their ears.

Probably not the best line of thought to be having.

Shaking her head at herself, Aia scuffed her boots on the stairs as she headed towards the Tavern. With any luck Alistair had gotten more done than she had.

Alistair was pretty much exactly where she had left him, and he glanced up at the sound of the door closing behind her, his face lighting up. _That_ would never get old. Ever. Ever ever.

Then Trouble poked his head up from under the table with an almost identical expression and she couldn't help but giggle.

"So I made a list, I figured that'd be good, right, lists? You're all organized and such all the time." Alistair waved a couple pieces of paper in the air as she slid into the chair besides him, then held it up away from her as she reached for it, "Heyyy, let me finish before you start reading!"

She rolled her eyes, but settled back into the chair as he continued, "So since it seemed to be coming up I asked everyone to tell me if they were related to any elves or lived with any or any of that. And... lots of elves in these families. Like, a lot. And it seemed to break down that the people with an elven parent were a lot more... elvish than the ones with a grandparent. And some of the people who said they weren't related to elves at all were only a tiny bit pointy but others were a lot pointy so maybe they just... didn't know? Same with the ones who said they didn't know."

"So..."

"So... uh..." Alistair shrugged, figiting with the papers, "Theoretically, do you think Arl Eamon might have... lied?"

The wise part of Aia's mind, small and frequently quiet though that part was, told her to lie, "It's possible. What's the chance he might not have even known?" She absently pet Trouble's ears as the dog leaned against her knees; big as a pony and somehow he managed to fit himself under the table. Somehow.

"I... suppose that he might not have."

The both went silent for a moment, before Aia sighed, "You know this would be a lot easier to figure out if your father was still alive so we could just ask him."

Alistair laughed, "A lot of things would have been easier then, I should think! Imagine how much easier the Blight would have been!"

"But then we would never have gotten Zev's lovely company!"

"What, being able to bathe without, as you so wonderfully pointed out earlier, being ogled? I think I could have lived with that."

Aia snorted, "Oh come on. He was fun! Or at least made for a great spy once I was friends with him."

"Spy?" For a second Alistair looked confused, then realization visibly hit him and she couldn't tell if he was horrified or amused or both, "You spied on me? Using Zevran?"

"It was more dignified than peeking out from the bushes." She grabbed the mug that was sitting in front of her lover.

"You think having _Zevran_ spy was-- Hey that's mine!"

Aia stuck out her tongue before taking a sip, instantly regretting it and making a face at him, "What in the Void are you _drinking_? Ugh."

"Obviously you just don't have refined taste."

"Alistair, my _dog_ wouldn't drink this."

A whuff of agreement came from under the table.

"Considering the things Trouble gets into he has _no_ right to be scornful."

"Love, that's so bad that even _Oghren_ might turn his nose up."

"That's not true! He once drank a whole barrel of pickle juice on a dare! I watched."

"I think this is a bit worse than pickle-- Wait, how did I miss this?"

" _You_ were off being all heroy and fussed over. So we got to have fun. I think that's fair, don't you?"

"No." Aia pouted at him, but apparently the expression didn't do anything since he just grinned and stole his mug back.

And then he took a sip of the horrid stuff.

"Oh ew, Alistair."

"Oh come on you've drunk worse. I'm sure. At some point. Probably _with_ Oghren."

"Well technically all Warden's can claim to have drunk one of the worst brews in existance." She corrected dryly, "And some of Oghren's stuff is actually good! That... What's it called. The stuff with lyrium in it that knocked me onto my ass with half a thimblefull."

"Didn't you _give_ that to him?"

She shrugged, "Well yes, but still. It is technically his."

Alistair sighed, then glanced at the papers he was still holding, "How, exactly, did we get from serious conversation to Oghren's booze?"

"You. Terribad beer. Give those here."

"Terribad isn't a woooord you know." He did at least hand the papers over this time, though.

Aia snorted, "Neither is elvy and we've been using that all day." A quick scan of the list, in Alistair's terrible handwriting (she'd have to rewrite this later), showed that it was pretty much exactly what Alistair had told her he'd found. "Alright, so let's assume that the lady you thought was your mother isn't-- which means that _Goldana_ therefore isn't your sister, so haha and yay for that... Who would know?"

"Uhm..."

Aia scowled at the papers in front of her, trying to think. Duncan had obviously known about Alistair's heritage before he recruited him but Duncan was far past their reach and bringing him up would only make things depressing. Eamon... would never admit to knowing even if he had. If Teagan had known she was sure he would have told her, especially after it was clear Alistair wasn't going to be king. Isolde obviously didn't know so if Eamon knew he hadn't told her. Who had Maric been friends with enough to confide in? Maybe that was the question she should be asking.

Of course, if anyone knew... then Loghain would have. Unless Maric told no one, in which case they were screwed. If Loghain _had_ known wouldn't he have mentioned... No, mentioning it would have been confirming Alistair was Maric's son. No way Loghain would have done that, especially in front of the Landsmeet when she was already winning. It would have looked desperate; more desperate, at least.

So... Right. She couldn't think of anyone who would logically know.

"Any magical ideas popping up yet?"

"Nope, I'm apparently all tapped out for magical good ideas. You?"

"None."

"So..."

"So we... sit around, get drunk, and hope the magical good idea fairy comes around?"

Aia snorted, "Not if the beer is that bad, we don't."

"Oh come on. Weren't _you_ the one who claimed you'd try everything once?"

"I did try it! I took a whole sip! It's a miracle I didn't end up spitting it out, really."


	6. Chapter 6

It was, Aia thought, a crying shame to be at a tavern and not be drunk. On the other hand, a drunk Aia was generally quite quickly a sleeping Aia so maybe it was a good thing.

Trouble surged ahead of them as she led Alistair up the stairs. When they wanted to, both of them could pull off quite convincing drunken acts. Sometimes that was useful... at the moment, well...

Actually, going upstairs sober was practically inviting some frantic newly elvy person to come pounding on the door at midnight. Even if she didn't have slightly nefarious plans in mind, it had been a damn long day and she had a feeling that both of them were due a bit of time without having to stress.

"You head on up, love. I'll be there in a moment."

Alistair paused, giving her a questioning look.

"I'm going to ask the bartender not to let anyone disturb us."

The looks passing over Alistair's face were an odd mixture of 'Oh yay' and 'Oh shit'. Usually she wouldn't have known what to make of it, but today...

She shook her head. Today she was pretty sure she knew exactly what to make of it. And what to do about it. Screw curses or undone curses or whatever this was, she could deal with emotions far easier.

A second later and she was back down by the bartender, who looked questioningly at her, "If anyone comes with a message for me, have them leave a note or come back tomorrow morning." She paused, "And warn them I generally hex the door, so unless they want to be... missing something, or find themselves in a much less comfortable shape than elven..."

The bartender blanched, "Right. Of course. Ma'am. Commander."

"Thanks!" She grinned brightly at him before spinning on her hell back up towards the stairs. It was a lie of course, the door wasn't hexed... but no sense not playing on assumptions when she could get away with it.

When she got back upstairs she found Alistair leaning against the doorframe, looking rather bemused. It appeared he'd at least started getting his armor off but stopped for some reason, since his pauldrons and gauntlets were missing. He frowned as she approached, waving a hand into the room. "Your _dog_ kicked me out!"

"Awww, did you harass Trouble again. Poor Troubleeee." She cooed, leaning around Alistair to grin at her dog.

The mabari, who had settled himself in the center of the bed, just wuffed happily at her, stumpy tail wagging about as fast as it could go.

"Heyyyy."

Aia ignored her lover, "Was Alistair being meannnn? Alistair has been quite bad, hasn't he?"

Another happy whuff came in response.

"No I haven't. Hey! Don't listen to the dog, he's the mean one! Manipulative little--" He cut off as she glanced up at him, raising an eyebrow. "What? He is! I would totally never get away with that!"

The elf snorted, rolling her eyes and going back to ignoring Alistair, "Alistair's been a bad bad boy, hasn't he?" Her voice went a bit sly and she shifted her stance a bit, running her hand up Alistair's armor "A very bad _mean_ boy. He should be punished. Really."

She tried not to snort with laughter as the dog cut himself off mid-whuff, giving her an look that pretty much said 'Wait, that's the voice that precedes me getting kicked out'.

The elf just stuck her tongue out at the dog, "In fact you might want to leave so that I can--"

Trouble cut her off with a grumble, jumping moodily off of the bed and bolting out of the room.

"I should really be protesting this." Alistair pouted down at her.

Aia just grinned. "Aww, you know you like--" She cut off with a shriek as Alistair suddenly hoisted her into the air, tossing her over his shoulder.

She heard Trouble growling from the stairs, but she was too busy giggling to actually say anything before Alistair had them in the room and the door closed and locked.

"I'm in trouble, huh? Nono, I think we have that backwards; _you're_ trouble."

"Well actually my dog is--" Aia stopped with a squeak as Alistair tossed her onto the bed, then she grinned wickedly and purred, "Oh so _I'm_ the one getting punished tonight? I have a... better idea."

No amount of years would stop Alistair from going red when she started talking like that. She could have been explaining the recipe for a pie and it would still make him red. Unfortunately it also usually made him _stop_ , but tonight that worked.

"Oh? Uh... Do you?"

Right, well, okay. Maybe it would have been better to not let him remember that he was being all self conscious.

She rolled her eyes, grinning at him and reaching a hand out. "Oh get over here."

"Well let me get off my armor first."

"So I get to watch you wiggle _out_ of your armor too? Perfect!" She settled back on her elbows, as though she was intent on doing just that.

Alistair still hadn't moved to undress, "Sure you do, little miss boots-on-the-bed"

"Well you are the one who put me here." The elf leaned forwards though, sticking her tongue out at her lover as she loosened the straps to her boots and pulled them off, socks following soon afterwards.

It took a great deal of self control not to chuck one of said socks at her lover. Instead she slipped off of the bed, shaking her head at him. Alistair had half turned away (as though she _hadn't_ seen him mostly naked just that morning). That just wouldn't do.

She padded quietly up behind him, grinning as she saw his ears twitch and whispering as she wrapped a hand about his waist, "I bet you can hear better now, can't you?"

"I... Yeah. A bit."

Her hand ran up Alistair's chest, then played up his neck so that she could trace a finger over his face, voice still low, "Bet you can see better now too, can't you. Did you know that we can see in the dark?"

"I... Wait, really?"

"Mhm. Not perfectly or anything, but much better than I'm told you humans can."

"So when I thought it was pitch dark..."

"Depends, if it really was pitch dark then I couldn't see. If there was any light... then I could see a lot more than you could."

"Oh."

She couldn't see Alistair's face, but considering the number of things they had done in the dark (and the number of things she knew he had done when he thought she couldn't see or hear him), he was probably blushing.

"It's a clear night, so any light from outside should be filtering right in..." She reached for Alistair's hand, taking a step back and tugging him to turn towards her and she raised her other hand with a dispelling light, "Want me to show you?"

Yep, he was blushing. He also looked exceedingly unsure about all of this, giving an embarrassed nod. Almost before the gesture was done she waved her hand, and all of the fire in the room winked out.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the sudden lack of light. The question was if Alistair's were as quick.

She dropped his hand and took a step back, her eyes shining as her fingers went to make quick work of her own belt. "Can you see me?"

"Uhm... sorta?"

Not so quick then, she grinned, carefully dropping the belt hard enough that it would thump but not break the glass vials in the pouches. She could see Alistair reacting to the sound, and then reacting again as she pushed the belt under the bed with her foot. No sense accidentally trodding on it.

"I... Alright my eyes are adjusting but it's not any--"

"Just wait." She interrupted teasingly, hands busy with the straps of her armored tunic.

The leather slipped apart easily as the buckles were dealt with. She could see Alistair's eyes following her hands. Definitely elven eyes, at least a little bit. And if he could see her hands then he was already seeing far better than a human. They were glowing a bit too, not so much as a proper elf's eyes would, but just enough for her to see it. Apparently that guess was a correct one then, if even the stranger elven things were showing.

Either that or his ears were telling him where the sounds were coming from.

"Can you see me?" She asked again, voice almost singsong as she arched and pulled her tunic up over her head. The blue striped fabric and metal fell to the floor with a twump almost at the same time as Alistair growled.

"A little."

She hooked her fingers under the waistband of her leggings, grinning up at him as she started to pull the thin fabric down a bit. "Just a little, hm? You know, I can't remember if I remembered to put on smalls today, do you think--"

Aia cut off with a small laugh as Alistair moved towards her, dancing back a bit not so much to get away as to lead him, and grinning as her back hit the wall.

A moment later his arm was around her waist and he was pulling her up into a searing kiss.

She arched appreciatively against him, her hands flying to undo the straps of his armor because he was still _far_ more dressed than she wanted him. Actually getting the straps undone was made a bit harder as he broke from the kiss and went for her neck, her head tilting back against the wall with a faint moan as his hand ran up her back and bit her _right there_ \-- Oh Maker he knew exactly what to do to make her _useless_.

Somehow, she wasn't quite sure how, she managed to get the straps to his armor undone, leaving the metal covering his chest loosened, pressing lightly towards her as she fumbled with his belt.

His belt hit the ground and they broke apart, both panting slightly. Aia let herself lean against the wall, watching with a satisfied grin as Alistair shrugged his chest armor off, tossing it off towards the other wall and sending his chainmail shirt quickly after it.

The worst part was that they were _still_ both dressed modestly enough to go downstairs without scandalizing anyone.

Apparently he had the same thought, since all at once his hands were on her undershirt, pushing the thin fabric up and over her head. Plenty of practice told her that he'd take forever if he tried to undo the straps to her gloves, so she slipped those apart, letting him pull them from her arms.

Before he could do anything else she ducked away from him, using the wall to propel herself up onto the bed and grinning at him from there, raising a hand before he could follow, "Ah-ah. Boots."

"Teasing minx." Alistair grumbled. But he leaned down to fumbled with his greaves anyways.

"Was there ever any doubt?"

She loosened the laces of her leggings, starting to pull them down and then squeaking when Alistair's hands were suddenly there instead, laughing and falling back onto the bed as her leggings quickly slid off, a soft sound off to the side telling her that they'd been thrown against something. Two louder thumps right afterwards had to be Alistair's boots. Then he was over her. On her. Kissing her hungrily as he pressed her into the thick mattress and it was _so_ tempting to just give into passion and see where that took them.

 _That_ was not how she wanted this to go tonight though, so she pushed him up, letting him wrap an arm around her waist and pull her onto his lap.

For a moment she stayed there, straddling and kissing him, then she twisted to his side, one leg still tossed over his and the other tucked underneath her. "Mmm. No. We're going to try something _different_." She leaned up to let her breath brush over his ear before flicking her tongue along the shell, "A lot different."

His hand tightened around her waist and his voice sounded a bit strangled, "Oh?"

"Hm, well maybe not that much different. I think I _have_ assaulted your ears before, but that wasn't as much fun."

"Fun for you or fun for me?"

"Both. Oh _definitely_ both." She nipped at his ear, earning a faint moan, "In fact I bet I can drive you crazy. Just" She nipped at his ear again, further down, "using", another nip, "this." She went up on her knees, shifting towards him as she sucked lightly on the tip of his ear. She could feel him shuddering, and had to wonder how much _stronger_ it would feel to someone who'd never had elven ears than it did to an elf who'd always had them.

"Driving me crazy isn't exactly-- ah! -- hard!" He laughed, pulling her away from his ear and back onto his lap.

She shifted up onto her knees and grinned down at him, one hand playing over his neck. "Not when I'm on you like this it's not. And _you_ are still wearing far too many clothes."

Whatever he was going to answer was lost in a moan as she leaned to the side and ravished his other ear.

Oh yes, this was definitely far more fun.

He writhed a little underneath her as he struggled with his pants, which were much thicker than hers, but she didn't bother to help or react until he'd gotten those down as far as he could in this position. Aia leaned back, partly so that she could pull the pants off his legs, flipping them towards the end of the bed, partially so that he could get his shirt off, and partly so that she could shamelessly ogle him.

The best part was that once he'd tossed the shirt away, his new elven eyes could _see_ the appreciative look on her face even in this low light.

"So _now_ who's wearing too much?" He teased, voice betraying a hint of nervousness as one of his hands ran up her leg to rest at her hip.

"Not you!" She shifted a little forwards, hand running down his chest towards his groin. "Mm, definitely not you. I however, am wearing two bits of fabric too many."

"You don't say?" One of his hands went to the laces of her breast band, pulling at the ties until the strip of fabric fell from her. Then he stopped with a groan as her fingers wrapped around him, nails teasing over the soft skin.

Her grin was almost predatory, "You know, with the amount you were stressing you'd think you were _small_. You aren't, just so you know."

He barely managed to get words out through a moan, his head falling back and his eyes closing a moment, "Well-- I'm--"

"Perfect. You are perfect no matter what shape you take and don't you ever doubt it." She let go of him, ignoring his moan of protest and reaching to caress his face, breathing, "But I believe that's breaking my rules. Just ears. Mm?"

"Fuck the rules."

Aia let her free hand move to his ear, running a nail from the tip to lobe as she answered teasingly, "Well I'm not sure the rules would make near as fun of a bed partner as _me_."

His answering growl made her laugh, and she leaned forwards to suck on his ear again.

"I... I am _so_ getting you back."

"Yes love, that's the point." She whispered mischievously, "Do try to pay attention. There'll be a test later."

"Uhn-- Evil!"

Aia lightly bit at the tip of his ear, earning another moan, "Like you'd love me any other way."

"I'd love you any way you-- oooohh Maker do that again."

Her teeth grazed against his ear as she caressed her fingers over his other ear. So easy. Admittedly always easy, but oh so fun and easy with this new way to play.

Then _his_ hand was slipping under the fabric of her smallclothes, fingers brushing past wet curls to caress her and oh shit. It was suddenly much harder to concentrate on making _him_ crazy as her hips jerked towards his hand, small whimpers slipping out into the air.

The elf arched up, head tilting back and one hand bracing on the bed while the other tightened its hold on his ear. Alistair leaned forwards, mouth descending on her breast as one of his fingers slipped within her and curled _just_ so, teasing a moan from her throat.

She could feel his other hand tensing around the strap of her smalls and suddenly pulled back, rallying her senses despite herself, "Don't you freaking _dare_ rip my smalls off; I need those to wear tomorrow."

He paused, grumbling at her, "You don't _have_ to-- bloody awkward clothes."

Aia whined as both of his hands pulled away, shimmying slightly to help as he slipped the straps down over her hips and somehow the annoying thing was gone. Alistair tossed it somewhere, she really didn't care where so long as it didn't go out the window, and then he was pulling her back down towards him, trapping her lips with his own.

Technically the rules of her game had been completely abandoned but she didn't _care_ as his hand caressed over her ass, pulling her hips down towards his own. Her head dropped to his neck and she bit down hard as he filled her, her hips jerking towards him and his own bucking up to meet her. His lips caught hers again and she moaned his name into the kiss, nails scratching lines down his shoulder.

If anyone dared to try to come in she was going to throw a fireball right in their face and damn the property damage.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning Aia was drawn from sleep by an overwhelming sense of everything being far too warm. The bed, Alistair snuggled up behind her and especially his arm around her. Even the tantalizing aroma of fresh bread wafting in through the window seemed like a promise of even more warmth.

She hated summer, she really did. Aia also hated having to get up. Ugh. Mornings could just go away and come back later. Except she needed to actually get up and out of bed or whatever was being baked for breakfast was going to be scarfed up by a small army of hungry Wardens who never seemed to have learned the concept of sharing--

Her eyes flew open and she suddenly realized that she wasn't in the Keep. She was in the tavern. On the bright side that meant the sun wasn't in her eyes and she could have all the breakfast she wanted without people moaning and complaining about her abusing rank to get extra pastries.

On the not so bright side, the reason they were here could very well be about to make a disturbing welcome call. She bit at her lip, trying to convince herself that holding her breath was a very bad way of avoiding this problem.

Alistair mumbled in sleep and nuzzled at the back of her neck, completely oblivious to her distress.

Right. Okay. Time to take stock and calm down. Start with details, work up to the problem. That tended to be the best way to do things.

Herself; naked. Clothes... Well she could see her smalls hanging from a picture frame so she assumed their clothes were scattered. Blankets; over her and in desperate need of being kicked off. Why in the world had they thought getting under the covers was a good idea? It wasn't like someone was going to climb all the way up here and peek in.

... Okay, so pretty much everyone in town knew that she was here. It was actually very likely that someone _would_ do that. That was the problem with being a hero; people seemed to think her private life was there for them to poke their noses into.

Unfortunately she had run out of things to classify and confirm. If this were Vigil's Keep there would be a whole host of morning sounds she could go through, but no. Of course not. She was already at Alistair.

Okay, she could do this. Alistair... Well definitely alive. Definitely still normally shaped. He didn't feel any bigger than yesterday, so apparently not human again. He didn't feel any smaller either. A grin quirked on her lips as she shifted back slightly and confirmed that he was definitely still a man (not that she was opposed to a bit of girly fun, but Alistair would probably be distressed if he had been missing bits), and a bit of squirming told her that, yep; still a little bit hairier than an elf.

She sighed, feeling a little bit better, and managed to free one of her arms from his. Right, time for the last 'did Alistair change randomly' test before she worked up the courage to actually look.

Aia chewed on her lip for a few moments, hand hovering in midair, then she reached back and tugged on Alistair's ear.

Still elvy.

"Nng. Too early."

Also still complainy. Aia shoved at the arm around her, kicking her feet to try to get the blankets off of them.

She didn't manage to loosen her lover's hold, but at least the blanket's were obedient.

"C'mon love! Lots to do! People to horrify, stuff to kill, fresh bread to eat! And maybe pastries! Do they make pastries here? I bet there's some fresh fruit in the market, at least."

His arms just tightened around her and she made a disgruntled sound. Apparently that wasn't working.

Flailing didn't work either, especially since she didn't want to actually hit him. In fact all that did was make her feel even _warmer_ than before. Ugh. In this heat she was probably lucky she wasn't as red as her hair, like... What were those clawy buggy things they ate in Rivain called? Lobster. Yeah. Those. The ones that went bright red when you tossed them in a pot.

She was going to look like a sunburnt elven lobster.

Alistair was still holding on like she was a giant elven stuffed toy, so she just sighed, poking at his arm. "Hey pointy. I'm going to start biting. Feeeeed your elf or she may turn ferallll."

That apparently was enough to get Alistair to pull back. She twisted onto her back to find him propped up on on elbow, looking down at her with something between fondness and bemusement. "Pointy?"

It said something about their relationship that the temporary nickname got a response, but the threats of biting didn't.

She shrugged innocently. "Well you _are_. How do you feel? You look the same as yesterday."

"Um... About the same, I guess?" He glanced down at himself, then back at her with a pout, "Except for all of those battle wounds. You are _vicious_ sometimes you know that?"

"Pfft, you know you like it." She called a healing spell to her fingers anyways, reaching up to trail the cool magic and sooth away scratches and bites. Aia was careful to _only_ sooth away the bites and not the redness of the blood she'd sucked to the surface of his skin, because Maker strike her down but she loved the look of those marks on him.

For good measure, once she was done she tossed a frost spell up into the air, the temperature of their immediate surroundings suddenly plummeting down to tolerable.

Alistair leaned over her, grin becoming a bit wicked. "You know, we don't _have_ to run right down. I mean it's not like they won't still feed us if we go down a bit after dawn."

She grinned up at him, stopped from answering as he pulled her up into a kiss. Aia trailed a hand down his side, hard pressed to find a really good reason why they _had_ to rush down. It wasn't like they were dealing with a life or death situation here and there were no Wardens around to set a good example for (or race to pastries). It was oh so tempting to just melt into his arms and--

Then her stomach growled. Loudly. Like her appetite was some sort of inborn cock-blocker.

Alistair dropped her back down to the bed with a laugh, "We really need to start bringing snacks to our room for the mornings or something."

She pouted up at him, "We'd end up just eating them at night and you know it. Plus, fresh breakfast!" The elf yawned, pushing herself to sit up on the edge of the bed with her feet swinging down.

His arm wrapped around her waist from behind as he kissed her shoulder. "Mm, you sure?" He paused, voice becoming mischievous, "You really sure you want to rush down?" A moment later he was sucking on the tip of her ear, driving away the last vestiges of sleep and drawing out a breathy moan.

Then her stomach growled again.

"Yep, pretty sure."


	8. Chapter 8

They ended up spending most of the day in Amaranthine before finally escaping via excuses about needed to be back at the Vigil. True, she didn’t _need_ to be back, but emergencies always happened when she wasn’t there so people tended to just take her at her word when she said so. At this point they weren’t getting any new information, other than to know that she really needed to find out who Alistair’s mother was if they wanted any sort of closure to this, especially if this whole pointy elvy thing was permanent.

Not long after leaving, Aia discovered something else. She had created a monster.

She growled slightly as, for the fifth damn time that hour, the elf heard Alistair ‘sneak’ (he was terrible at sneaking) up behind her. She ducked away as he went for her ears, _again_. “Will you _stop_ that!”

He didn’t even have the grace to look contrite, just dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head before getting distracted by Trouble. She had two big bounding puppies, is what she had. Apparently, ones that had some strange immunity to the sun and for some reason weren’t sharing this magical heat resisting secret.

She was never going north over the sea, she just wasn’t built for it. Was there such a thing as a frost elf? She wanted to be a frost elf. Somewhere cold. With snow. And cold. Nice wonderful cold.

Normally, Alistair actually taking the initiative made her day. Normally she wasn’t hot and sweaty and dusty and generally feeling gross. Damn summer weather. Damn Warden uniforms. Next time they had to replace her uniform, she was going to tell them to just do hers all in grey and silver. Sure, the bloodstains would show more, but at least it wouldn’t soak up heat so damned well. If choosing her own uniform colors wasn’t a perk of being Commander then she was going to _make_ it be one.

She tossed another frost spell over herself, sighing at what she knew was just a brief respite. It was quickly approaching the longest day of the summer, and the heat was making a trip to the deep roads sound like an absurdly good idea.

“How come you’re so much more damned cheerful than me?” She grumbled

“It’s hot out and you’re some kind of... anti-hotness thing.” She raised an eyebrow at him and he rushed on, “Not like... Not anti-hot in a bad way but... you know what I mean!”

The redhead snorted, glancing up at the sky, “You know what I need to do? I need to figure out a way to turn rock armor into ice armor. That would last longer.”

“You’d be soaking wet.”

“Bonus!” She grinned at him, tossing an ice spell at him and watching the crystals dance over his breastplate then quickly melt in the unrelenting heat, “Plus, then you wouldn’t be able to try and make me all horny when I’m too hot to do anything about it.”

“It’s not my fault. You’re all... you! And now I know what it does and...” There came the blush again, “Well... uh... um...”

“You knew what it did before!” She protested, managing a laugh despite the heat.

Her lover shrugged, looking sheepish and waving a hand towards his own newly pointed ears, “But I didn’t know! You know, not know but _know_. I sorta figured it was like human ears, but it’s like... like...” He paused, normally she’d finish his thought about now, but in this heat her brain was taking a bit long to respond, “It’s like comparing milk to cheese. Sure they’re made out of the same thing but one is just good whereas the other is _amazing_.”

Aia laughed, “Trust you to compare sex to cheese!”

“I didn’t—I mean, I was just… Um… Ears! I was comparing ears to cheese.”

“Ears lead to sex.”

“Not always, I’m sure there’s a lot of things that ears could lead to. Like sounds!”

“Oooooor... Sex.”

“I...” The human laughed, “I’m not going to win this one, am I?”

“Nope.”

“Alright, fine. I concede defeat. The lady has defeated me with her wily wily ways and defiled cheese forever.”

“So now every time you eat cheese you’ll be thinking of sex?” She teased, kicking lightly at a rock in the road.

Alistair went a bit red, “Uh... No, probably… Not? What is it with elves and everything being about... _that_ , anyways?”

“Horniness is not an elven trait.”

“Really? Between you and Zevran you’d never be able to tell.”

Aia snorted, flicking a bit of hair from her eyes and grinning slightly, “Say that around Velanna. I dare you.”

Alistair raised a hand, then paused, “Hm... Point. Yeah I’m not that eager to have a tree growing from somewhere unpleasant.”

Off in the distance Aia could see the walls of the keep rising above the treeline. Or more, she could see the banners that rose above the walls, which meant she’d see the walls soon. Usually the banners would be flying but today the air was still, not even the occasional breeze to make the fabric flutter. Ugh, no wonder it was so hot out.

“Almost home.” Alistair said, voicing her thoughts. Then he laughed, “You know, it’s still odd sometimes, to think of the Vigil as home. Some days I wake up and expect this all to have been some huge elaborate dream.”

The elf laughed, “Especially days where you wake up with randomly pointy ears?”

“Or days when I wake up with a foxy redheaded hero in my arms. _That’s_ definitely too good to be true.”

That got a laugh out of her, and she hit him arm as she walked a little bit faster. Silly flattery or not, it _did_ make her steps seem a bit lighter.

“What? It’s true!”

“Well I’m currently your grumpy, sweaty, icky hero. I need a bath,” She stuck her tongue out at him, then grimaced as her stomach growled slightly. She sighed, cursing her damned Warden appetite and then cursing aloud at Alistair as he started laughing at her. Why was she always the one making noises? He must hide some food in his armor or... something. There was no way he didn’t have as much of an appetite as she did.

“Food too!” He reached over and she gave him one of those _looks_ , but all he did was tug on her hair before the gauntlet retreated and he grinned broadly at her, “How about this, I’ll go drop Trouble off at the kennels, grab some cold lunch, and meet you at the baths?”

“Alright, you _must_ be planning something. You’re being all helpful and reasonable.”

“Heyyy, I don’t have to have a reason to dote on you! I love you, of course I take care of you. Plus, you know I’m always the reasonable one.” She could practically _see_ the moment he realized how that could backfire, “Not that I’m, saying you’re unreasonable or anything don’ttakethatthewrongway.”

The elf snorted, not able to muster up the energy to even pretend to be offended, “Fine, fine. Be all gallant and such, but I’m onto you!” She tilted her head back, grinning at him, “If we get food in the baths it’s totally your fault.”

He placed a hand solemnly over his breastplate, “I take full responsibility for any food related mishaps.”

The walls of the keep finally rose over the horizon, and suddenly the heat seemed a lot less oppressive. Something about almost being home made things a lot easier. It always did, it didn’t matter whether she was coming back from the deep roads or some boring frustrating thing in Denerim or an equally frustrating thing with the local Banns or some stupid party or just a shopping trip in the city. Coming home, just seeing those walls and knowing they were _hers_ and the Wardens in there were hers to command and protect...

Except for having to attempt to be a good example to them (she doubted she was fooling anyone), she really couldn’t think of anything more she could ask for. Except for winter, she wanted winter to be there. Or maybe fall, just fall and winter and early spring all year long, no more summer allowed.

Trouble rushed ahead of them, barking at what she could only assume were imaginary squirrels (she hadn’t seen any real ones, they were probably being logical and _not_ moving around in this heat). Whatever the reason, by the time they reached the gates, the smaller door in the grating was already being swung open to admit them.

No one came running up screaming about anything, so she could only assume that for once there _hadn’t_ been any sort of huge emergency. The nonchalance of the gate guards just reinforced that.

Her stomach behaved itself until they were about halfway to the keep, before letting out a huge growl that sounded like it was attempting to imitate a lion. She gave a frustrated sigh, glaring down at the blue stripes of her uniform, “Damned appetite.”

Alistair laughed at her, staying carefully out of range, “Well, good thing food is close at hand!”

“One of these days I’ll figure out how you manage to keep from being so obviously hungry! I know you’re hungry too! You always eat when I do.”

“I eat more.”

“You’re bigger and carry heavier stuff.”

“That I do.”

Ever so helpful, he was. Aia grumbled at him, but didn’t protest as he swept her up into his arms and kissed her forehead before letting her down again, “I’ll be there in a few minutes! I promise!”

“You know just because you said that, something’s going to distract you and make a liar of you.” She answered, tossing a cheeky grin over her shoulder. He just waved at her, Trouble bouncing in circles around him as he headed towards the kennels.

Well, even if he _did_ get delayed she could always go get cleaned up then go for food. It wasn’t like she could get into trouble for raiding the pantry.


	9. Chapter 9

Technically, she had her own washtub in the Commander's quarters.

Realistically, she almost always ended up using the ones in the common area. They were bigger and more practical and, best of all, had a wonderful pump going right into the tubs (which were set into the floor, something about the water flowing easier that way). Apparently it was some sort of dwarven engineering, but all Aia cared about that she could have a nice quick bath without having to bug anyone about it. Sure, someone might walk in on her, but _she'd_ grown up in the Circle. Been there, done that, walked around naked afterwards.

Within minutes her tunic and weapons were hanging on the wall (no sense risking the metal getting rusty), the rest of her clothes were in a pile by the tub, and the water was just warm enough not to be a shock without adding to the horrible heat of the day.

Just getting _into_ the water made her feel less icky. Oh cleanliness, how she loved it. The worst part of going to Amaranthine wasn't the nobles, it was the bloody walk.

Someone, preferably someone who was not her, needed to figure out the secret to teleporting.

On the other hand, they had enough weird magic flowing about right now, maybe teleporting could wait.

It was amazing how important the little things were; in the tower apprentices had always had harsh soap, meant for getting clean quickly rather than any sort of luxury. She'd thought Wynne was inane with her fussing about soap... right up until the point that she'd learned _soap_ was the reason the senior enchanters always smelled like flowers. Aia had always thought they used some sort of spell for it, but no, it was the magic of soap.

Then she'd learned a bit about the world and discovered that she ought to be more grateful for her plain apprentice soaps. At least they'd had them.

The soap here smelled of peppermint, which grew in abundance around the keep, and she loved it. Not only was it better at erasing the smell of darkspawn ickyness, but something about it just seemed so much damned more relaxing after a long day of walking or fighting or even just sitting in her office trying to answer annoying letters without cursing.

Of course, right now the peppermint was just making her hungry.

Her stomach rumbled and she grumbled right back at it, ducking her head under the water to scrub the soap from her hair. Aia needed to cut her hair again; all through the Blight she'd had it short and that had worked wonders, but since then she'd let it get longer and longer. Alistair seemed to like it, but in this heat it was impossible.

She stayed underwater as long as she could, just enjoying the cool embrace and the soft pounding of the water in her ears. It was like the fade, if the fade didn't come with the ominous undercurrent of demons and spirits.

A slight sound caught her attention, so she pushed herself up, sucking in a deep breath as her head broke the surface and rubbing the water out of her eyes.

Alistair grinned at her from the edge of the tub, where he was already mostly out of his armor, "I was wondering if I was going to have to pull you out. You aren't a fish, you know."

"You never know! You grew pointy ears, maybe I could grow gills!"

"Mermaid Aia? That would be... um..." He blushed slightly, obviously imagining it, then grinned, "I don't think there's many darkspawn in the ocean though, you'd get so bored!"

"We could fight sharks." Aia countered, sloshing over to the edge and grinning as she realized there was plate full of bread that was spread with some sort of jam and a pile of cut cheese right besides him, "We could tame sea serpents and hunt down all of the raider vessels! They'd never see it coming!"

"But if they didn't see it coming wouldn't it scare the merchants away from the ocean too? They wouldn't know you had tamed _nice_ , raider-hunting sea dragons."

"Hush, I will have none of your logic." She reached for one of the pieces of bread, bracing her elbows on the edge of the tub as she took a bite. Mmm, strawberry. She'd forgotten; it _was_ a good time for strawberries right now. "Ooooh, I love you." She purred, licking a bit of strawberry jam from her lips.

"Me or the food? Because if it's the food I'm going to be jealous."

She grinned at him before taking another bite, "Both!"

He reached over and tugged at her hair as he slipped into the water. "Such a cruel mistress you are!"

Aia took another bite of the bread, before reaching to snag a bit of cheese... which was promptly snatched from her hand. She glared petulantly at her lover, who just gave her an unrepentant grin. "Hey! That was mine!"

"But I did so much work fetching it from the kitchen!" He countered, grabbing the soap she'd left on the edge of the tub. Normally she'd be tempted to steal said soap and use it as an opportunity to harass and tease him... but at the moment food won out.

Aia made a rude gesture at him, stuffing another piece of cheese into her mouth and giving him a look that just dared him to make a comment. He was smart enough to refrain, instead busying himself with the soap as she attacked the food. Sure it wasn't ladylike to eat that way... but she was fairly sure ladylike went out the window once 'Warden' was tacked onto a title anyways. Or Commander, for that manner.

"You know, I had thought being shorter would lead to problems."

"Hmm?"

"You know, balance and stuff. Instead it just means I don't have to bend down to your height! I might escape without back problems after all!"

She hit him on the arm, "I'm not _that_ short, you ass!"

"Says the one who hasn't been having to bend over!"

Aia laughed, raising eyebrow at him, "So what we did last week on my desk was...?"

"Oh, uh..." Alistair rubbed at his neck, blushing darkly, "Uh... Wow, didn't mean that at all."

"Obviously you haven't been around me enough. You'd think by now I'd have corrupted you completely."

He waved a hand, still blushing as water scattered in the air from his fingers, "I'm onto your wily ways, oh temptress."

She pushed herself closer to him, bracing one of her hands on the edge of the tub besides him and tracing the other up his chest. "Oh?"

"Um... Yes. Totally. Completely."

The elf slid into his lap, grinning as she felt him slide against her leg, "Certain parts of you seem to disagree!"

He laughed awkwardly, running a hand down through her hair to cup her cheek, "Yes, well, you _are_ extremely distracting to certain... uh... yeah."

"You know what I want to do?" Aia asked lightly, head tilting into his hand as she looked up at him through her lashes.

Alistair gave her a look that was bordering on lascivious, though the effect was somewhat countered by fact that he was still blushing, "Should I guess? It could be a game!"

"Was that a leer? I think that was a leer! When did you learn that?"

He glanced away, "Uhm... You're a bad influence?"

She laughed, "I was _going_ to say..." Aia paused, running her tongue over her lips and waiting until he was watching her again, "I want to drag you upstairs, fall into bed..." She leaned up, slipping her hand further down his chest as she whispered into his ear, "And take a nice, long nap."

Alistair burst out laughing, arms going around her waist, "You're impossible!"

"I try." The elf twisted in his arms, squirming until she was comfortable on his lap.

"You don't need to try, it's like... a facet of your being, or something."

"You aren't allowed to say you aren't smart then use words like facet." Aia let her head fall back onto his shoulder, feeling like she could stay just like this forever. Well, maybe not _just_ like this. Like this but out of the water. The water was nice for now but it would get old and icky after awhile.

She reached out a hand to pull the plate closer, then made a frustrated sound as she realized it was just out of reach. Just a couple inches too far away, and Alistair's saround her waist like a vise made getting those inches a bit difficult.

"Lemme get my fooooood."

"Oh no, this is your punishment for being a teasing minx."

She half twisted around again, grinning up at him and bracing a hand on his chest, "Oh, punishment, is it?"

His grip loosened, and she was pushing away to the other side of the tub before he even had time to respond. He growled, she laughed and swatted his hand away as she grabbed a bit of cheese. "Uh uh! Wash up first."

"You, are _evil_!"

Aia wiggled a little bit, grinning over her shoulder, "Look at it as incentive to wash up more quickly."

By the time she'd devoured a couple more pieces of bread and half the cheese (she could only assume he'd eaten on the way, since he should be starving as well), he was already clean and slipping out of the bath. For all of the habits they did share, that was one they didn't. She liked to languish in the bathroom, spending far too much time just soaking. He liked to wash up and get dry as soon as possible.

She supposed it made some sense; for her bathing had always meant wonderful time to talk with friends free from prying Templar eyes (if not ears). To him it had meant having to be awkwardly naked around people who weren't exactly his friends.

"You _could_ spend more than five seconds in the water, you know."

"Oooor, you could come out to a nice warm towel."

"Ugh, warm." She pulled a face, "I don't want warm right now. Nice and wonderful cold."

He wrapped a towel around his waist, shaking his head at her, "The flagstones are cold. And clean! They must have mopped this morning."

"And _hard_."

From the look on his face and the awkward way he shifted, he was apparently thinking of other things that were currently hard. Aia stifled a laugh, pushing to stand up in the water and taking care to step out of the tub _just_ slowly enough that he would stare as the water dripped down her body.

Really the towel he threw at her head wasn't too much of a surprise, and she caught it with a laugh before wrapping it around her shoulders. He could say what he wanted about her being short, at least being tiny meant that towels were wonderfully huge on her when they were made for someone the size of human men.

As she chased away the last of the water (her hair was probably sticking out all sorts of directions, but she'd comb it later), Alistair had already grabbed the plate and started guiding her towards a dry spot on the floor with a hand on the small of her back.

It was the little things, things like this, that made her happy. Not the big stuff, but the things that said they just _fit_ together. Not a word shared and they could tell each other where they were going. In battle it just took a gesture or a tilt of her head towards an enemy and they'd be switching tactics so easily that it was like they could read each others minds. If people had known she was a blood mage, she was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to convince them that she _wasn't_ reading his mind. But no, it wasn't that. They just knew each other so damned well that mind reading would be redundant.

Of course, she was reminded as he pulled her down into his lap, they fit together physically pretty damned good as well.

For a moment they were silent as she snagged another piece of bread and he grabbed a few pieces of cheese. Oh food, a Warden's real love. Damned appetites were impossible.

"So, you fancy a trip to Denerim?" She licked a bit of jam off of her finger.

Even though Aia couldn't see Alistair, she could hear him swallow and she was certain he was pulling a face, "Uh, not really?"

She leaned her head back against his shoulder, "Me either. I think I might just write Anora."

His answer was muffled as he nuzzled at her hair, "You think she would help?"

"I think she'd rather have her own people going through Maric's things than let us uncover who knows what manner of dirty secrets." Aia frowned, picking at her bread.

"Mmm, might have a point there."

"Sadly. I _love_ uncovering dirty secrets! Especially when they have nothing to do with me. What's the bet that if there is any 'Alistair's actually half elf' type evidence, Anora will gleefully be spreading around the fact as soon as she finds it?"

"Does she do anything gleefully? She's more the stern serious... sterny type."

"Paperwork." Aia said decisively, waving a hand in the air, "She's the type to be absolutely gleeful with organization, I just know it. I bet you she does paperwork before bed."

"You read over paperwork before bed." He chuckled.

She could feel the rumble of it through the thin towel and couldn't help sink against him a bit more, wanting more of that feeling. "Yeah, because it's _boring_ and I put it off all day then have to cram it in. She probably reads tax reports like they're fairy tales."

"Says the girl who stays up until sunrise because she found a new book."

"Books are fun! Tax reports, not so much."

"Books on _elfroot_?"

"Hey that... okay, point." She twisted a bit, poking his nose, "But it was a book on _herbalism_ and I was able to figure out at least two new poultices and a few multi purpose antidotes. I mean, really, where else have you found any antidote that applies to magebane _and_ soldierbane without utilizing lyrium? Not to mention that by soaking blood lotus in diluted venom and then using the distillate in a three to one ratio with the original venom ingredient I can make a poison that has the symptoms of Quiet Death but acts faster and requires an antidote with the distillate component so if an enemy uses the original antidote they'll just--"

"Alright, alright! I get it. Please spare your hulking barbarian the details."

Aia snorted, elbowing him as she shifted back around to settle in his lap, "You're plenty smart enough to understand all that. That wasn't even really getting _into_ the details."

"My eyes glazed over at 'herbalism'."

She elbowed him again, getting a grunt in response, "Liar."

They both glanced up as the door squeaked open, "Commander are you-- Oh!"

The door slammed shut again, and she couldn't contain a giggle, "You know, clothes might be a good idea. Hopefully that wasn't important."

"You really think you without clothes would deter them if something was important?"

"Probably not." Unfortunately one person looking for her usually meant others coming soon after, and she'd eaten enough that she couldn't use hunger as an excuse for avoiding responsibility at the moment. With a sigh, Aia wiggled a bit to get free, but Alistair's arm didn't remove itself from around her waist so she glanced up reproachfully at him, "Love, I can't get dressed with you clinging to me."

He blushed slightly, arms tightening around her, "We don't _have_ to get dressed..."

"Oh?"

Before either of them could elaborate more on _that_ possibility, the door cracked open just enough to let sound through, and she heard Nate from the other side, "Commander, a messenger from the Queen is here about the... ah..."

"Elfifying?"

"Yes, that. Apparently it has Denerim in a bit of turmoil. He says he was told to ask if you had any... insight."

She heaved a sigh, "Tell him I'll see him in my office in, say, twenty minutes."

"As you wish, Commander."

As the door shut, Aia scowled, crossing her arms, "Because _obviously_ this is my fault."

Alistair nuzzled at her hair again before pulling both of them to their feet, "Well you do have a way of being right at the center of everything."

"So?" She huffed, "It's not like I'm _that_ powerful. Or like I have that much free time."

"Maybe... she thinks you stumbled upon some ancient elfy thing and... something happened? You do that a lot too."

She slipped from his arms, and this time he didn't stop her. "I'm certain I'm not the _only_ person with a habit of poking things and having odd consequences come about."

He laughed, "True, but how many others have a bard spreading tales about spirits in gemstones and dragons made of lightning?"

She rolled her eyes, reaching down to help him up with one hand and holding her towel up with the other, "It's only been a few years since the blight; soon enough someone else will do something amazing and everyone will stop paying attention to little ol' me."

"Little, yes. Ooooold? Not so much." He grinned at her, leaning down slightly to brush a kiss over her forehead as she made a face at him. "We're both still in our twenties, not even _close_ to old."

"Sometimes I _feel_ old. A few years ago we totally would have had sex at least three times in the time we've been in here."

"I don't think I've _ever_ had that much stamina."

She giggled, suddenly feeling a lot lighter, "Mmm, maybe not but _I_ would have gotten off three times and that's what counts."

"Hey!"

Aia pulled her pants out of the pile of her clothes; she'd send them to be washed later, but for now they would do, "Take it as a testament to your own skills."

"Or your ability to imitate a desire demon." He muttered, fumbling to untangle the mess that he'd left his clothes in.

Pants. Shirt. Tunic. Belt. Socks. Overshirt. Boots. Gloves. Maker she had far too many layers on. She _really_ needed to get them to make some sort of alternate uniform for the warmer months. Sure it was protective and kept her wonderfully warm in the winter, but right now it was terrible.

Once she was dressed she moved to Alistair, her smaller fingers making quick work of the last of his buckles. She grinned at him as she pulled the last one tight, standing on her toes to press a kiss lightly against the side of his mouth.

That stayed innocent for about half a second before his arms were around her waist, pulling her up against him. To anyone else the sound of scale mail scraping against plate armor might not have been arousing but to her it meant that both sets of armor were soon to be coming _off_. Her arms went up around his neck, gloved fingers digging into his short hair as his tongue slipped into her mouth and-- Someone knocked at the door.

"Maker's _ass_." Aia glared at the door, then pulled away with a sigh before calling out, "Tell the messenger to hold onto his dick and wait! We'll be there shortly!"

She could hear the sounds of someone scurrying off, and grumbled to herself as she stepped away from Alistair and towards the door.

"What happened to taking a nap?" He reached out to ruffled up her hair, mussing it up even more than it already was before tucking his gauntlets into his belt.

"I have been restored by the power of food and soap!" She proclaimed, flinging a hand out and pausing to consider her reflection in the glass, "However my _hair_ is sorely in need of a combing so lets stop by our room first, then we can deal with the messenger."


	10. Chapter 10

The messenger was one of _those_ people. One of the ones that were oh so uppity about being the 'Queen's personally appointed messenger' that they suddenly lost all flourish and finesse when confronted with an elf they had to talk to as an equal, walking about like they had a stick rammed up their arses.

Even when that elf was the girl who had saved all their asses. Maybe especially then, because she wasn't just important, she was Important with a capital I. Her being a mage likely didn't help. It always made her wonder what would happen if they knew she was Maleficar as well… Would the mantle of Hero remain the same impervious armor that it already was, or would she and Alistair have to flee in the middle of the night before the metaphorical pitchforks and torches (and the very real Templars) came out?

At least Alistair was one thing she never had to doubt. The world could fall down around their ears, but so long as they were both alive they'd always be able to pick up the pieces. She didn't _want_ to ever leave the Wardens, but the only one she absolutely wouldn't leave was Alistair.

Even that idle thought made her tempted to turn around and kiss him. Sadly, she had a human who was just finishing up a stream of official sounding pleasantry shit, which meant she had to pay attention. Blast it.

This messenger was at least looking her in the eye as he spoke, rather than shifting awkwardly or trying to speak to Alistair instead (the glee her lover got from redirecting such people back to her was one of the many things she loved about him). It didn't detract from the man's obvious discomfort, but it was an effort. She supposed it would be completely out of character for Anora to send a messenger that didn't at least know not to piss her off; the woman wasn't stupid. Aia might not _like_ Anora, but she did respect her. Grudgingly.

"Her majesty is of the opinion that you may have a unique insight into this... problem."

Aia crossed her arms, "I'd imagine the mages in the Circle Tower would be better suited to this. I haven't lead a life of study for quite some years."

Ser Stick-up-his-arse actually managed to keep a level expression in the face of her scowling at him. Huh, a bit more spine than she'd assumed, then. "The Circle has been contacted as well. It has recently come to attention that you not long ago were in the pursuit of an elven artifact. Should it be related..."

Aia exchanged a quick glance with Alistair. He looked concerned... but no light had gone on over his head, and she wasn't getting any flashes of genius either. "That was awhile ago." She answered him, shaking her head slightly, "Whatever this was, it wasn't a gradual change. It was sudden."

"I should know." Alistair spoke up, "Trust me, if there had been any inkling of this happening when I went to bed the night before, I would have noticed."

The messenger frowned at Alistair. Usually her lover speaking up was treated as an invitation to continue the discussion with him rather than her... but to her surprise the man practically ignored the human, "Be that as it may, you have experience with such things."

"I have experience slaughtering my way through ancient crumbling ruins, yes." Aia rubbed at her temple with a sigh, "You want my opinion?" The man nodded, a slight and quick thing, "We _think_ , just think, mind you, that those changing are part elven--"

"Have you any proof of this?" For a brief moment the man looked like a mabari about to seize onto a bone, then he seemed to remember himself and was back to being Ser Stick-up-the-arse.

"Proof? No. Not unless you count most of the changed people having elven ancestors and the rest having not met at least one recent ancestor. But I'm _sure_ Anora is compiling that sort of data for herself."

She paused, raising an eyebrow at the man. He'd already interrupted her once, if he wanted her thoughts he could bloody well ask for them now.

Only a moment or two of silence stretched before the man asked stiffly, "Have you any... other insight past that?"

"I can conjecture if you'd like."

"The Queen believes your ideas to be worth considering in this matter. We have no true 'expert' on this. Your, ah, exploration is the only recent information on such things, and our knowledge of exactly what went on in those instances is lacking."

"Then you haven’t been looking very hard." She snorted, ignoring the subtle dig for more details about the trouble she got into, "People hunt for treasure all the time. Granted, they usually end up dying horribly either to Dalish or monsters, so I suppose I have one up on them in that regard."

The man remained silent, shifting awkwardly.

"If I had to guess, I'd look to history." Aia shrugged, glancing at Alistair again. They hadn't really talked over this... but what the hell, it was just guesswork, "The ancient elves didn't exactly like humans. Who's to say that they didn't have some sort of strange magical contraption to make it so that part elves didn't look like the rest of us? All elves, prior to a few days ago, I mean, are _pure_ elves. One drop of human or dwarven or kossith blood, and boom, not an elf."

"Kossith?"

The man looked legitimately confused, but she scowled at him anyways, "Yes, kossith. Qunari is a religious distinction, not a racial one. Not all Qunari are kossith and not all kossith are Qunari."

She shook her head again, brushing some stray hair out of her face (she _had_ brushed it, but she hadn't had time to tie it back nicely), "That, however, is besides the point. If there _is_ some sort of spell or whatever that made part elves not elves, then it could literally be anywhere on Thedas. We _did_ once rule here before the humans invaded, you know. The ruins of the old elven kingdom are everywhere, and each one could easily have some thousands of years old spell where a rune was finally rubbed off or a statue crumbled or... hell some treasure hunter could have seen a pretty gem and pried it off an alter without realizing what they were causing."

The messenger was frowning at her, so she just shrugged and gave him a bright smile, "Basically, this is too widespread for any known magic to have caused if it's both here and in Denerim. Since there is literally no way to even find out what happened, much less how to 'fix' it, assuming it even _should_ be fixed, I would advise she concentrate more on working to incorporate it. Maybe everyone will change back next full moon or something, maybe this is permanent. I'd assume permanent since the effects aren't a curse."

"You're sure of that."

"Neither of us could dispell it."

The man gave Alistair a sharp look, "Neither--."

"I was a Templar."

Aia frowned slightly, glancing at her lover. He looked... a little bit upset. She doubted the messenger noticed, Alistair had gotten quite a bit subtler over the years, but she knew all his nuances and the way he was standing definitely meant he was at least annoyed.

Shit. It couldn't have been something she said, could it? They didn't _always_ talk over her ideas before she mentioned them to someone else, so she was certain that wasn't it. Almost certain. Except she'd been talking about humans and elves and this being permanent and this all was probably hitting a hell of a lot closer to home than her usual rambling did.

It took a force of will to keep from chewing on her lip as she shifted slightly, catching the messenger’s attention again, "I'm afraid that's all I can tell you." The elf pitched her voice to carry further, looking towards the small group of Wardens attempting (badly) to eavesdrop from behind the columns, "Godfrey will show you to a guest room, I doubt you'll want to head straight back to Denerim today."

The man bowed, apparently happy now that his precious decorum was back in place, "Thank you, Warden Commander.”

She nodded slightly, practically ignoring the man in favor of focusing on Alistair.

A million different ways to phrase 'What's wrong?' ran through her head, quickly followed by, 'Whatever I said, you know I didn't mean it badly.'. Or maybe just 'I don't know what I did but I'm really sorry all the same.'. Eh, screw that, most of the time 'I'm sorry' was just safer.

Alistair shot a tight smile her way, waiting until they heard the door close at the end of one of the side halls before he let out a sigh, "How can you _stand_ that?"

Alright, that hadn't been anywhere near what she was expecting, "What?"

"That... that..." He waved a hand, starting to look a bit pissed, "He gave me a look like he couldn't fathom why in the world I was daring to speak up. I mean, it's not like I'm here with you for a reason or anything. Oh no, I'm just here to look pretty and scare off the mongrels."

She blinked for a moment, then grinned a little. Ah. Yeah. That. She hadn't even thought about that, "Well to be fair you _are_ amazingly pretty." Aia paused, tilting her head theatrically and glancing towards the ceiling, "Or... hm... handsome would fit better, wouldn't it? Or maybe ravishing. You're a bit too big and manly to be 'pretty'."

That got her a chuckle, and got Alistair to relax, "You think? Is there a height limit or something? Either way _you're_ the prettiest person around so maybe I get some pretty points through association."

Aia shrugged, trailing her fingers up Alistair's arm as she walked past him towards the stairs, "Mmm, I don't know. Is there a rule for that sort of thing? Some sort of social convention or something?"

Before she had gotten more than two steps past him, Alistair's arms were suddenly around her waist and he pulled her back against him, burying his face in her hair, "Really though, how can you _stand_ that? It wasn't even anything he said, just that _look_ like... ugh."

"Assholes and bigots will be assholes and bigots." She reached a hand up, tempted to trace her fingers over one of his ears... but no, now wasn't the time for that. Instead she ran her fingers through his short hair, running them down to rub small circles against his neck, "I doubt it'll be changing anytime soon, even with all of this... but..." The elf sighed, "At least you and I are able to kick all of their arses, and the smart ones know it. It scares them a lot more than they're willing to let on, I'd bet."

Alistair let out a humorless chuckle. "Well," he growled, "I'm now doubly glad that I scare off anyone stupid enough to call you knife ears. I just... I wish you'd told me about the looks, too."

Aia grinned to herself, relaxing into his arms. Trust Alistair to be worried about _that_ of all things, "I don't think you would have been able to scare off everyone that looked at me funny, love."

This time the laugh had a bit more genuine humor in it and she felt him lifting his face from her hair, "You doubt me? Me? I'd quite happily scare off everyone to give you _any_ sort of bad look. You're alllll mine."

"And thus the scary factor _totally_ dissipates," She teased.

He nipped lightly at her ear, "Oooh, cruel."

"Mmm, maybe a little. But just a little."

"Or a _lot_."

Aia giggled slightly, leaning her head back against his chest, "Nope, just a little. Remember when we tried one of Zevran's suggestions? The one where you were tied up and I was trying to be all forceful but we kept screwing it up and laughing so we you ended up taking me against the wall instead? Neither of us is good at cruel."

She could practically _feel_ him blushing.

"I-- Aia! We're in the... In the..." She felt him shift behind her glancing around, his voice suddenly lowering to a whisper, "There are people just... just over there!"

She giggled, arching against his armor so that she could look up at him, "What? It's not like I was talking about the time we played Templar and apostate with you as the apostate and me as the Temp--"

Aia cut off as he pressed a hand over her mouth, smiling against the metal of his gauntlet at his quiet sputtering above her. "You-- You are a terrible terrible person. Terrible. I-- Annnnd as soon as I move my hand you're going to say something worse so we're going _upstairs_ now."

She ducked away from his hand, grinning over her shoulder at him, "And what sort of terribly terrible things do you _think_ I'll say, hm?"

He rolled his eyes, perusing her and catching her around the waist again in the space of a moment, not that she was trying very hard to get away. "Knowing _you_? Uh... All sorts of them. Maker."

"Look at it this way; I'm educating them!"

"You're a menace is what you are." Alistair released her, capturing her glove in his gauntlet and tugging her towards the stairs. "A terrible terrible menace. I think I'm going to have to confine you to your room for the rest of the day, young lady."

"Oooh? What dastardly things do you have planned?"

The way he blushed all the way to the tips of his ears shouldn't have made her feel so warm and tingly, but she couldn't help it.


	11. Chapter 11

Aia slowed her pace as they reached the hallway to their bedroom, letting Alistair stride on ahead. He looked... Confident. _Himself_. Every inch the man she had fallen in love with. There were times when she couldn't decide whether she loved him more like this or all adorably hesitant. She suspected that the answer was 'however he was acting at the moment'.

Alistair stopped in front of their door, smiling back at her, "Something wrong, love?"

For a moment she was silent, "If I was right about the whole 'something breaking in an ancient temple' thing, and assuming it could be fixed... Would you want to? Be a human again, I mean."

"Would _you_ want to?"

"Not what I asked."

He was silent for a second, "Welllll... I don't think so. No. I mean, at least this way we never have to worry about someone wanting to give me the crown if Anora kicks it."

Aia smiled softly, feeling oddly relieved. It was silly, of course, she shouldn't feel relieved about this... But the feeling of relief didn't dissipate as she moved towards their door, reaching out a hand to him. "Well, you know I'd go to the ends of the earth for you if you asked."

He took her hand, pulling her in with a smile before pushing her back against the wood of their door, one of his arms bracing above her head while the other traced her cheek, "And that's why I'm not going to ask."

Alistair was kissing her before she could do more than grin, and Aia found she had absolutely no desire to break away from that, none at all. One of her arms wrapped around his neck as she arched against him, her other hand tracing the griffon emblazoned on the front of his armor.

She would have been perfectly happy to have had him right _there_ in the hallway. But before she could even try to start divulging him of armor, he was opening the door behind her, guiding them both through and slamming it with a kick of his foot.

At about that point she blindly grasped at the buckles holding his pauldrons on, fingers flying to tug the leather free without a care for the crash of the metal against the floor.

For a few frantic minutes her world was all kisses and hands and armor falling to the ground. Then, somehow, she ended up pressed back against her desk. Aia had just a moment to be glad she didn't have anything _important_ on this desk before Alistair was shoving her chair out of the way and lifting her up onto it, papers scattering onto the floor.

There was an open window right behind her. She really couldn't have cared less.

They broke apart for a moment, chests heaving as they grinned at each other. They were still both in an absurd amount of clothes. How in the world he'd gotten her _tunic_ off without undoing her belt or gloves was a mystery, probably a mystery that would result in having to repair it in the morning.

Not that Aia particularly cared. She grinned at him, "You're wearing too much."

" _You're_ wearing too much." He leaned in, brushing a kiss across her cheek. The lightness of it made her giggle; of all things for _right now_... But it did bring Alistair within easy reach, and she wasn't one to complain about that.

Before she could so much as reach for a buckle, he caught her wrist, tsking at her, "Nuh uh, my turn."

She raised an eyebrow at him, "Your turn?"

"You _might_ have noticed this before, just, you know, maybe, but I enjoy undressing you." And there was that telltale blush, spreading all the way up to his ears.

Aia giggled again, her free hand reaching for his ears "Oh? I don't think I _did_. I might need some _reminding_."

He caught her other hand with a wicked grin, easily holding both of her wrists in one hand as she pouted at him.

On the other hand, Alistair so rarely wanted to take charge... And it was always so wonderful when he did... With a dramatic sigh she tugged her wrists free, falling back to stretch over the surface of the desk, "Then have your _wily_ ways with me, Ser Knight."

It really _was_ a wonderful thing how easily he blushed.

He grinned, hand reaching up to caress through her hair almost as a knock sounded at the door. Aia struggled not to groan, and she watched as Alistair turned to glare at the sound, "Ugh, can we just pretend to not be here? Maybe? Please?" Alistair pouted at her, voice barely above a whisper.

She was still considering it when the knock came again, so she whispered back, "Unless you fancy trying to be quiet as a freaking mouse... probably not."

He sighed, making a frustrated sound and resting his forehead on her stomach, "Fineeee."

Aia pushed up to her elbows, one leg wrapping around Alistair's back as she called out, "What is it?" then added a belated "Don't come in!"

There was a moment of silence, then the sound of Sigrun's voice calling through the doorway. "Hey, bunch of nobles with their britches in knots just sent another messenger. Want me to tell him to shove off and come back later?"

This wasn't _nearly_ as important as the Queen's messenger. It could fucking wait, "Please?"

Sigrun laughed, but before Aia could consider that the end of it she heard a put upon sigh that could only be from Nate. Then the man called out through the door, "Commander, they're panicking a bit. Apparently the Queen's people mentioned that you might know something and, well... If you could just calm them down."

"Or we could chase them out." Sigrun suggested.

Aia tried not to laugh as Alistair sighed and muttered something about timing and cockblockers. "Well... We're still decent. Technically. As much as we're _ever_ decent. But we have clothes on!"

Alistair made a frustrated sound, sliding his hands up along her legs and hooking his fingers under the waistband of her pants, nearly pulling her off the desk as he hauled her trousers and smalls down in one movement.

She grabbed onto his shoulder with a squeak of alarm, then giggled softly at the grin he shot her before calling out, "Actually I'm no longer decent."

Alistair managed to get her pants worked down over her boots. Not really surprising considering how formfitting the leather was, but still. "I mean technically my shirt is long enough to be a really _really_ short dress and I still have my belt on, but as soon as I bend over--"

Aia cut off as Alistair tossed her pants off to the side and hauled her up into a kiss.

Through the door she could hear Sigrun laughing all the way down the hall. Less happily she could hear Nate trying to get her attention again.

She ignored him. Annoying messengers or Alistair's hand up her shirt... she was going to go with-- ooooh that felt good.

When they finally broke apart she grinned at him, "You know you _could_ have just taken my boots off."

"But that would have taken longer! Plus, I think he fled now."

She followed his gaze to the heavy door, which was indeed silent. One could assume that whoever was on the other side was either silent or had fled as well. Considering it was Nate, she was going to go with fled.

"How long do you think it'll take for someone else to come to fetch us?"

Alistair snorted, "Well... Probably about five seconds…” She let out an indignant squeak as he suddenly scooped her up from the desk, tossing her over his shoulder, “but it's not our fault if we can't hear them through _two_ doors! They're pretty thick! The doors, I mean. Not the people. Well, not most of them."

She wiggled her legs, gloved hands bracing on his back, "Oh no, _whatever_ shall I do, being hauled off in such a manner! Fiend!"

"Oh yes, I'm going to have my dastardly way with the blushing princess. Mwhahahaha!" His free hand hit her bare ass, drawing another squeak from Aia as Alistair shoved open the door to their bedroom, "Except you never blush. Why don't you blush? It's always me."

Aia could hear the pout in his voice and grinned, twisting to reach around him and caress her fingers over his ear, "Mmm... Because it's _you_."

"R-right. Yes, that's a wonderful explanation. Next time you do something I'm going to use that explanation." He paused halfway to the bed, then turned around and went back to lock the door. "Actually that's a pretty good excuse. Why do we have to battle this huge monster? It's Aia. Not the monster, I mean, just the situation being your fault because you always get into these-- Shit that's a bad example."

She laughed as Alistair tossed her onto the bed, bouncing once and grinning at him, "You think that extra door between us and the hall is _really_ going to stop them?"

He blushed, "Well it's not like anyone is going to come into our front room after _that_."

"I don't think we locked that door, actually."

"Don't care."

"On the other hand considering the discarded armor we left all over the place in there they'd have to be as dense as... uh." She paused, frowning, "Someone... dense."

"Shale?" He suggested, crawling onto the bed.

Aia laughed, rolling her eyes at him and reaching out to grab his shirt, "She was only dense in the made-of-rock sense. Not in the 'can't read a hint to save her life' sense."

Alistair huffed as she hauled off his shirt, voice briefly muffled by the fabric, "... We don't know many really clueless people, do we?"

"Are you _complaining_?" She teased, trailing a hand down his chest, "Of course, some people probably would have claimed _you_ were our token clueless one."

"Oooooh, that's it." He grabbed one of her hands, trapping it against the bed over her head as his other hand trailed up her leg, "You're at my mercy now. Mwhahaha and all that."

She tried to arch closer to his hand, tilting her head back as she tracked every little movement of his warm fingers against her skin. If _this_ was punishment then she never, _ever_ , wanted to be good.

When he released her hand, sliding down to nuzzle at the bare skin of her leg, she decided that she was never going to be good ever again. Nope. No incentive whatsoever to be good. Lots of incentive to misbehave, however.

Aia looped a leg around his shoulder, trying to urge him further up as her toes curled in her boots. He just chuckled, kissing her leg again, but his _hand_ moved up, lightly caressing over her curls. She arched up towards the touch with a faint moan of pure need, and for one wonderful moment his fingers were slipping through her folds, caressing over her and dipping to press into her-- before suddenly pulling away.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows and pouted at him. Alistair just grinned impishly up at her, as though she wasn't completely _certain_ he was as aroused as she was.

"Tease! Tease! You're such a-- a tease!" She wriggled in annoyance, glaring petulantly at him.

"What's that, pot? The kettle is black? You know, I had _no_ idea."

The elf let out a whine, poking at his back with the heel of her boot.

"You know, I'm not sure if it's just me but it seems like you might be a little bit _impatient_. Can't imagine why."

Even if she hadn't known better, the way he was flushed all the way to the tips of his ears said otherwise. Aia growled slightly, letting out a flow of magic that would usually simply heal but when used at _just_ the right speed and intensity would-- Alistair moaned, burying his face against her leg, and she grinned triumphantly as she reached down to caress his ear. Yeah. That.

Never let it be said that she didn't play dirty.

In what had to be a force of self control far beyond Aia's own ability, her lover simply took a breath and tilted his head into her hand. "Mmm... Nope, still no idea..."

"Arg! Fine, I'm really, really sorry for implying that you're the clueless one. Obviously you're far more dastardly." She moaned.

He laughed, sliding his fingers back up to stroke over her again, "Thought so!"

She was tempted to kick him, stopped only by the reminder that she was wearing boots and that would quickly turn a petulant gesture into a violent one. Stupid boots. Then he started kissing his way _up_ her leg and all thoughts of kicking completely vanished from her mind.

His finger plunged into her, twisting at _just_ that right angle to drive her crazy and she lifted her hips up off of the bed with a strangled moan, "Ohhh, right there. Right-- Oh Maker yes right there."

Alistair bit lightly where her hip joined her leg, shoving the edge of her shirt up out of his way and then-- Oh Maker. She moaned as his tongue laved against her, practically in time with his fingers as they stroked within, "Oh, love you can just keep doing that _forever_. _Maker_!"

One thing about blood magic that she would never ever tell him because it would taint everything, was that she could _feel_ the movement of his body. Especially this close, with his tongue slipping inside her with a suddenness that drew another moan from her lips. She _knew_ , even without looking, exactly how aroused he was. She could even feel how his hand moved as he pulled himself from his pants, follow along with the strokes that had absolutely no help from her.

And that just wouldn't do.

Calling up fire was risky. It would be so easy, far too easy, for the spell to go out of control and hurt them both. Someone cautious would never use fire in this manner.

Aia was many things, but never cautious.

The words to the spell rolled out in a moan, the warmth first pooling in her fingers, following them as she caressed Alistair's ear, then she sent it shooting down, playing over every part of her lover's body that she couldn't reach with mere hands. Following _his_ hands and stroke along with them, squeezing and flowing within him just right _there_ until he gave an almost broken moan.

Another spell rolled off her tongue as she coated her fingers in ice, just a thin sheen of it, the thinnest, trailing that coldness down the back of his neck and over his shoulder blades, then chasing it with a burst of fire that she spread over the whole of him, before suddenly dismissing it as she felt herself getting oh so fucking _close_.

" _Maker_ , Aia." He pulled away from her. Before she could so much as whine he was surging up over her, an arm wrapping around her and pulling her into a kiss. She gripped at his hair, moaning into the kiss as she tasted herself on his lips, a hint of smoke from her spell winding in their shared breath as they broke apart.

Aia pushed him to the side, rolling with the movement until she was straddling him, one hand braced on his chest and the other reached to trace up along his jaw. " _You_." She told him, voice dark with desire, "Are fucking perfect. You know that, right? It should be illegal for you to be so freaking-- _you_."

He pulled her down into a harsh kiss, fingers tangling in her hair and his face flushed as he whispered against her lips, "Yeah, well, you know me. I-- uh-- I--."

Aia growled lightly, fingers trailing up and down his hardness with bursts of hot and cold.

"Oooh Maker you can't expect me to say _anything_ when you're doing that."

"Can't I?" Her fingers paused in their movement, her hand squeezing at his base before she sent a burst of heat through the length of him.

"Noooo. No, not at all. No talking here-- Oh do that again."

Her fingers pulled just barely away from him, trails of fire enclosing him almost of their own accord as she leaned forwards to press a kiss against his chin, " _Just_ that?"

She was doing her best to ignore how much she _needed_ him right then. Pacing. She could do pacing. Maybe.

Alistair's answer was a growl as he wrapped an arm around her back, pulling her into another kiss.

And suddenly she couldn't do pacing. Not even a little bit. She couldn't have said which one of them started moving first, but all she cared was that just a little change in position and he was sliding into her, the sudden feeling of fullness making her gasp.

Aia arched back, gloved fingers scraping against his chest as she slid down him, griping around him. Their voices mingled as he reached both hands for her hips and she leaned forwards to bite at his shoulder, trailing kisses up his neck. Aia was so damned _close_ that it was almost unbearable and she couldn't decide if she wanted the end to come quicker or to _draw it out_. Pride insisted that she couldn't lose control that quickly. Then they suddenly found a rhythm with each other and she decided that pride could go fuck itself.

It took all of her concentration to remember to dispell the spells she was controlling, the fire rushing away in a burst of heat. Their lips crashed together as she muffled her cry of release in a kiss.

They broke apart almost as quickly, Alistair's back curling as he gripped at her waist and buried his face in her neck, chasing after his own release. The words to a rejuvenation spell rushed off her lips before she could even think to succumb to the sudden exhaustion that _always_ seemed to overcome her, the magic washing over the both of them.

That seemed to be Alistair's undoing. Her lover's hands grasped at her as he cried out, "Oh-- Maker-- Aia!"

He fell back against the bed, moaning faintly as she slid away from him. Aia collapsed onto her side with a happy hum, cuddling against his chest as his arms wrapped around her and he murmured endearments into her hair. They'd have to get up and clean off and actually get their boots off eventually (preferably _after_ a few more times)... but for right now she honestly didn't care.

This was all she needed; just him. Always him. It was just-- just _this_. They could both be turned into dragons tomorrow and it still wouldn't change. There was nothing better, nothing _stronger_ in the world than this. Them.


	12. Chapter 12

Nearly four months after a large portion of Thedas had grown pointed ears, and nothing had changed.

Not in the 'randomly pointy people' sense, at least. Politically things were going absolutely insane. In fact Ferelden was one of the only places with so little political upheaval. According to this letter, the credit for that was being laid at her feet. Every Bann, Arl or freeholder who had gone slightly pointy had immediately started waving the 'The Hero is elven and an Arlessa!' flag around.

Apparently her existence wasn't something that people would argue with, not this close to the end of the Blight. And judging by her last visit to Denerim things were getting a fuckton better in the alienage already. Nothing like a bit of blurring of the lines to start changing opinions… though during that first month there had been a lot of yelling and screaming it, especially among the working class.

It was _out_ of Ferelden that the real upheaval was happening. Well, everywhere except Rivain, which seemed to have greeted the change with a collective shrug before going on as usual.

The King _and_ Queen of Antiva were, according to rumors, quite pointy now. There had been a very brief civil war over it that had ended with the current royal family still firmly on the throne (And a lot of their opponents assassinated, but that went without saying. It was _Antiva_.). Aia had been reminded of what Zev had once said, about how the Antivan royal line was bastard several times over... Well, looked like he hadn't been exaggerating about that. She figured Zevran would bring all the juicy details next time the crows chased him this direction, and she'd just have to stay curious until then.

The _funnier_ outcome had been how many Orlesian nobles and Tevinter magisters had gone elven, because the sheer numbers there sounded hilarious. Served them right, if her guess as to _why_ was correct. With any luck the infighting would tear both countries apart. She didn't exactly have much information about what was happening in Tevinter, but she imagined there was blood everywhere. Literally. Orlais she had plenty of information about, including all the debates on if the half elves should be confined to the alienage with the pure elves or if they should make a new alienage and a whole huge thing about holding titles and lots of boring stuff that basically came down to the pointy nobles fighting with the non-pointy nobles.

The important part was that they were too busy tearing at themselves to bother Ferelden.

She let the latest letter about Orlais fall to the desk with a snort. Never before had politics been this bloody interesting.

Closer to home it was less politics and more rumors. Her favorite was the one that insisted _Aia_ had gotten tired of being the only elven noble and done some mass spell to change that. The number of people who believed that was disturbingly huge, so it was probably only a matter of time before she had people trying to kill her over it. Joy.

In the Vigil... Nothing much had changed, except that she’d had a lot more contact with the Queen lately. Well, that and Alistair had insisted on taking over any meetings with those he had dubbed 'the assholes'. _That_ had been a frustrating argument. Half of the damned Vigil had gotten in on that, after one particularly loud debate she'd had with her lover in the practice rings. Somehow Alistair had gotten people to gang up on her and insist that if nobles were going to look down their noses at an elf, they might as well be forced to talk to someone taller than them so they hurt their necks doing so.

Nothing like having to _complain_ about being booted from her least favorite duty. Also, nothing like being booted from her least favorite duty, so she'd gotten over it fairly quickly.

She shoved back from the desk with a sigh. While paperwork was currently a lot more _fun_ than it normally was, it was still paperwork. Thankfully, it was also finished paperwork.

Which of course meant that as soon as she stood up, Oghren was shoving the door open and waving a package that had _probably_ been neat before some idiot had handed it to Oghren. Now it was a bit crumpled.

"Hey Commander! Queen sent ya something!"

"Usually she just sends letters or messengers." Aia reached out for the package and plucked it from the dwarf's hands, rather glad to find that it was _dry_ and thus the contents hadn't been assaulted by whatever potentially corrosive thing Oghren had been drinking.

It could be some sort of research or... well she really didn't know what. She had an entire _pile_ of reference notes Anora kept asking her to look over, since apparently the queen hadn't taken her many hints of 'the Circle is right the fuck there, ask them' to heart. This couldn't be part of that, though, Aia had just sent a letter off about the latest bits of information not two days ago. Even Anora's messengers weren't _that_ fast. And her messengers were bloody fast.

So this had to be something different.

"Thank you Oghren." She said absently as she peered at the package (which was addressed like all the others), before breaking the wax seal and untying the string holding it together. The dwarf just muttered something, before starting back clanking down the hallway.

Aia was more interested in the package. It was sort of like a Nameday present! Except it probably contained less fun things and more dry historical documents. Not that she usually objected to research, but the stuff Anora had been sending lately had been particularly dry.

Instead of any fun looking surprise, there were two letters... and a rather worn looking book with a stain on the spine that she'd be willing to swear was from darkspawn blood.

Something to do with the Wardens, then?

Aia leaned back against her desk, setting the book and the second (still sealed) letter aside as she started reading the first letter, which was in Anora's hand. It was also a bloody short letter, for Anora.

 

_Warden Commander Surana,_

_The journal enclosed with this letter encompasses a period of time during which Maric Theirin journeyed with a group of Wardens. The relevant passages have been marked, specifically those dealing with Warden Fiona. To the point, the last marked passage describes the delivery of a bastard child who was to be told he was of human heritage._

_Fiona was contacted, and in light of recent events has revealed herself to be Alistair's mother. A letter to Alistair is also enclosed._

 

The letter went on for a bit after that, mostly formalities asking her to be discrete with the journal and-- oh, great. Anora was asking about the Architect. Well, that was going to be a fun explanation. And a royal summons. Double great.

None of that was important right now though. The important parts were at the beginning. Specifically the 'Alistair has family' parts.

Aia wanted to be thrilled, she really did. Instead she regarded the sealed letter with no small bit of unease. That this Fiona was a Warden explained why she had given Alistair to his father. Vigil's Keep was a fairly nice atmosphere, but most other Warden fortresses were very anti-child type places. And as an elf Aia could understand not wanting to make a half elven child's life more complicated than it had to be with a stigma no one would know about anyways. Plus, this Fiona couldn't have known anything that would happen after she handed her kid over to the king...

But, fuck it, last time they'd contacted Alistair's 'family' it had been a bloody disaster. Complete disaster. As in, Alistair upset for _months_ disaster. Void, he still got upset over it sometimes. So maybe the letter would be a good thing. Maybe it would be all loving and wonderful... but what if it wasn't?

Alright, logically she doubted the woman would send a letter if she didn't want anything to do with Alistair, but... Oh fuck it.

Aia grabbed up the second letter, breaking the seal. Yes, yes, she was going to the void, but fuck her if she was going to let Alistair read something particularly heartrending without at least warning him.

Two minutes later, she was grinning like a fool and racing through the halls, journal and letter in hand.

She finally found Alistair heading towards the practice rings, decked out in full armor. He had intended to simply keep the armor he had started using in those first couple of days… Then she had stumbled upon some ancient silverite alloy. Since she didn't wear anything heavier than leather or scale mail, she’d asked Wade to make something for her lover. The result was nice, shiny (alright, not so shiny, the metal reflected light like oil on water), intricate new armor. The style was a bit odd, but then _everything_ Wade made looked a bit odd so she wasn't going to complain.

And he did look oh so striking in it.

Alistair grinned as he spotted her, waving for Nate and the other Wardens with them to head on without him as she sauntered up towards the group, "Something up, love, you look like the cat who swallowed the raven."

"Canary."

"Right. Yes. I can never get that one right. Regardless." He waved a hand, giving her a searching look.

She just grinned up at him, holding up the letter and journal, "I have a present! I already read it though, sorry. It came via Anora so I thought it prudent to check for traps."

He raised an eyebrow, focusing on the journal, "A... book?"

"A letter."

"A letter?"

"From your mother."

"From my... Wait. What? Seriously?" Alistair reached for it, then paused, pulling his hand back like he was scared the paper would burn him or something, "Is it one of those 'please pass this on to my kid after I die' type of letters?"

"No, it's a 'Alistair is going to be taking a trip to meet his mama' type letter."

"I... Um..."

She waved the letter, trying to convince herself that she really shouldn't be enjoying the trepidation on his face. If she hadn't known the contents... But Aia _knew_ what was in the letter and that somehow took all of the tension out of it. For her. Poor Alistair was probably a wreck. "Would you like me to spoil it for you, or would you like to read it yourself?"

"Um... Well considering how the last time I connected with family went..."

Aia moved towards him, reaching up to caress his cheek, "I _have_ already read it, love, I wouldn't ambush you with something nasty like that."

"I know you wouldn't! I just... Uh... Spoil it for me, please?"

For a moment she considered making a show of it and just reading bits and pieces from the letter itself, but Alistair was already looking like such a puppy waiting to be kicked that she relented, "She's a Grey Warden at Weisshaupt. She's thrilled that you're happy and apparently has been spying on us the last few years. Not that she put it like that, but you know." Aia grinned cheekily up at him, tapping his nose with the letter as she held up the journal, "And this, is apparently Maric's journal from whatever trip he was on where you were conceived and whenever Fiona handed you over. I have no idea if there's anything spicy or terrible or otherwise likely to make you want to chuck it out the window, I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet."

"Fiona? That's my mother's name?"

Aia, pressed the papers into his hands, grinning at his stupefied expression, " _Read_ it, love. Or better yet, read it to me!"

"I..." He shook himself out of whatever stupor he was in, grinning widely down at her, "Okay."

"A little bit of family connection and you suddenly become a man of few words?" She teased, running a finger up along the shell of his ear.

His eyes closed and he shivered, "Oh, not fair. Not fair at all." Her hand pulled back and he took a breath, "I... I just... It's..."

"It's...?"

"I... I... How do you even--" He cut himself off with a laugh, running a gauntlet through his hair, "Sorry, I just..."

Aia grinned softly at him, standing on her toes to press a kiss against the side of his mouth, one hand braced on his armor, "Yeah, I know. The world is going topsy turvy all over again. But hey, look at it this way! Being a Warden was totally fated, your mom was one!" She paused, head tilting, "You know, Fiona's letter mentions asking Duncan to look after you. I bet _that_ was why he kept you out of the fighting. He was watching out for a friend's kid."

"I... You think?" Alistair wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close.

"Well, we can always ask her. I bet she knows."

Alistair laughed, "She would-- I bet she would! I... Shit. Words. I'm failing at them. Sorry. I..."

Aia snorted, pulling him down so that she could brush a gentle kiss over his lips, "How about you read the letter first, then we'll work on regaining the ability to talk?"

His arms wrapped around her and he pulled her up into a kiss that was decidedly _not_ chaste. They were in the middle of the hallway not ten yards from the doors to the practice rings... But sod it. The other Wardens could just go around the long way. So instead of pulling away, she wrapped her arms around his neck, arching against him and struggling not to get too aroused by the sounds of her scale mail scraping over the details of his armor.

When they finally did break apart, Alistair having ended up against the wall, they just grinned breathlessly at one another until she laughed, "You can kiss me anytime, you know. It's not every day you get a letter from your mother!"

"Technically the letter isn't going anywhere. I can read it anytime too."

Apparently he had regained the ability to speak. Her kisses were just that awesome. "Well in _that_ case maybe we should head somewhere more private?" She teased.

"Give it here," He laughed, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor and tugging at her hand. She slid into his lap effortlessly, passing over the letter as she leaned back against his chest, "Just promise not to laugh if I... I don't know... Start crying or anything particularly unmanly like that."

"I promise," She pressed her glove over her heart, tilting her head to blink solemnly up at him, "I don't, however, promise not to giggle. But I do promise to kiss all the tears away so that'll even it out, maybe."

He snorted, biting lightly at her ear, "You are so _weird_ sometimes."

Aia's eyes fluttered closed a moment, and she leaned back against his chest, "Mmm, but you wouldn't love me any other way."

"Of course I would, I love you every way imaginable... And you're going to make that kinky, aren't you? Of course you are. Whatever you’re thinking, stop it."

'But the sexy, kinky things are the most fun!"

He bit at her ear again, and she could just imagine how red he was probably going. "No making things... like that when we're about to read something from my _mother_!"

Aia let out a contented sound, "You biting my ear and saying _not_ to make things sexual is a bit self defeating, love."

"I... Alright. That's fair." He took a deep breath, flipping the letter right side up, "Okay. Let's read this thing..."

She settled against his chest, waiting for a few moments. Then a few more. And a few more... "Alistair?"

"You know what? I'm a coward. Can you read it to me? Please?"

Aia snorted and reached for the letter, "You aren't a coward, love. I’ll read it… but only because you're being so _cute_ about it."

"Yes. Well. Right. Alright. I could totally do this, you know, I'd just rather listen to _you_ than... Um... I'm just going to shut up now so you can read." He shifted nervously beneath her, arms wrapping around her waist as he hid his face against her neck.

She hummed lightly, one of her hands running over his, lacing their fingers together. The other hand held up the letter, so that Alistair could see it if he wanted to, "Alright. Dear Alistair. I suppose 'Warden Lieutenant Alistair' would be more appropriate, since we aren't exactly acquainted…"

Aia grinned to herself as she read, Alistair gradually relaxing until he was actually looking at the letter. No one actually entered the hall, probably warned off by Nate, and they ended up sitting there reading and rereading the letters and passages until she could see the sun setting through the windows at the end of the hall. Contrary to his fears, Alistair _didn't_ cry.

Finally the sunlight almost completely gone below the horizon, and they both were silent. Aia pulled Alistair's hand up and tracing her fingers over the lines of his gauntlet as the edges glinted with the colors of sunset, "So..?"

"I... I think I need a bit to… to process all this. This is--" He sighed into her hair, "I mean... damn."

She laughed, pulling his hand up and pressing a kiss to each of his fingers, "Say we sleep on it? Then tomorrow I can make you flail about by planning a trip to Weisshaupt."

"I... You know you can't really surprise me with stuff like that when you _warn_ me." He tapped at her nose before she recaptured his hand.

"I figured you were a bit wrung out on the surprises for now."

He laughed, brushing a kiss over the tip of her ear, "So long as you're here, I can deal with as many surprises as I need to."

Aia pressed his hand over her heart, her own fingers lacing with his, "So long as _you're_ with me, so can I."


End file.
